With the advent of social profiles here on BoM it'd be a shame to keep them viewable only to members, so I've decided to PARTIALLY open all user profiles to public viewing. What this means in practice:

- non-BoM members or logged out members can now see most of your user profile page (they couldn't until now)

Non-BoM members or logged out members can NOT SEE the "Contact Info" tab in your profile or ANY of your picture albums. Users still need to be logged in to be able to view and/or use those parts of your profile.

At the moment, non-BoM members or logged out members also CANNOT VIEW the contents of any social groups.

Update: After careful consideration and a few private discussions I have decided to disable the viewing of any picture albums for non-BoM members or logged out members until the board software allows for a "viewable to BoM-members only" setting for albums on the user end.

Since this is a relatively major change, please post your feedback and any questions or concerns that you might have here, or contact me via PM.

And private goes my albums.

I've updated the original post. Long story short, I've decided to reverse my decision to make picture albums viewable to non-members. This kind of setting should really be up to each album's owner, so until that is possible, no albums will be viewable to non-members.

Sorry for the confusion, everyone.

I agree with this decision - until such time that there is a check box for "viewable by BoM members" it is probably best to err on the side of more privacy than less.

I like this change. I really wasn't too comfortable with non-SP'ers seeing my pics, but I didn't want to limit it to friends list.

Yea, it seems like an obvious oversight that they didn't put in this option from the get-go.

Is there a "viewable to BoM-members only" setting for the entire profile, that is controllable on the user's side, or is this either on or off for everyone?

Regardless of how little information there is on my profile, I would prefer it to not be available to non-BoM members (more out of principle than anything else, really).

Good move on the albums - those I would most certainly NOT want available publicly. They're on SP and not a public site like Myspace for a reason :)

That's a global setting again, unfortunately. However, as it is now, there's not much that anyone can see there that they can't already see in the user's posts. I've also disabled the viewing of profile pictures for unregistered members.

I wasn't comfortable with everyone and their dogs taking a look at my albums. BoM members taking a look at my albums I'm absolutely fine with (though some stuff is visible only to my buddies).

Realistically, there is next to no difference between a BOM member and a non-BOM member, given that anybody can become a member. You don't really know who those other 10,000 odd registered members are so restriction to 'friends' is really the only one that means anything.

Not really... there are a lot of lurkers who've been reading these forums on and off for years but never signed up. Or people who just hit the forums, see what there is to see and run with no intention to ever join. None of them get to see any pictures this way. This way albums are at least limited to those people who show the minimum interest in the community that is joining the forums.

That depends on who it is that people are worried about seeing their stuff. If you're worried about some evil government organisation looking at your stuff then registering at SP isn't going to stop them. If you're worried about your psycho ex looking at your photos, then registering at SP isn't going to stop them.

By restricting your photos to SP members, all you are really doing is reducing the likelihood of non computer RPG players seeing you.

Either you care about your privacy, or you don't. Being half-hearted about seems a bit pointless.

As Death Rabbit would say:

"Walk on road. Walk right side - safe. Walk left side - safe. Walk middle - sooner or later you get squished, just like a grape."

If anything, this thread illustrates that there are varying degrees of privacy that people want to keep, so it's not just "either you care about your privacy, or you don't". What works for you doesn't necessarily work for everyone else.

When it comes to privacy, I would prefer my albums private, I guess, but limiting all of the pics to just friends/contacts isn't an option for me, because it's quite possible that I omitted to include in those lists someone I wouldn't mind seeing the pics.

I'd rather show the pics to everyone, than not show them to people I might want to, just because I forgot to put them in the lists.

The BoM Members Only option might be half-hearted, as Harbourboy suggests, but it is better than nothing. I for one don't mind it.

It's no big deal to me, but I'm just interested in what people's angle is on this.

I agree with the change. My angle is that, as a 48 year old chartered accountant, I want to avoid the inevitable influx of women who find me too irresistible.

Accountant groupies - we just can't control them.

:p

In all honesty, this whole album issue is rather moot to me; I don't have any pics kept here on SP - if'n I want anyone to see a given picture, I'll show them myself either via email attachment or posting on a forum with the pic stored on a site like imageshack. :heh:

It does sound a decent capability in theory for other more social people than myself :), and holding off until a "this is only viewable by my designated friends" switch is implemented is a wise thing.

But, I'd approached this topic a little thinking somewhat like Harbourboy - if they WANT to get at them, they will, so why bother? (then again, people can pick key-lock deadbolts, so why have any on your house, either? :P )
By-the-by; glad you spoke up already on that, mate! :)

Anyways, hope this augmentation of the album functionality gets implemented soon for y'all!

It does sound a decent capability in theory for other more social people than myself :), and holding off until a "this is only viewable by my designated friends" switch is implemented is a wise thing.

There IS the ability to make any album viewable only to your designated friends and contacts. What's missing is the ability to make any individual album (not) viewable to BoM members only, but that is irrelevant now, since I've set it so that globally albums are invisible to non-BoM members now.

There are three basic permission levels:

1) Unregistered / logged out members
2) Registered + logged in members
3) Friends / contacts

Currently, group #1 cannot see anyone's albums no matter what. Group #2 can see any albums that a user has marked as public. Group #3 can see any albums that a user has marked as private.

I hope this makes it a bit clearer.

I think the norm shall be as with other public sites,where you have the option to share albums with friends and or public,if you want. My friend had her pic copied of and used on a paid to contact dating site,even her e-mail taken by them somehow and up for sale to($8USD) any guy wanting her contact details..lol. Albums/Pics Ok for me to public,I am non plussed,but you have to be cautious these days,as there are jerks who can exploit you.

I suppose this is a bigger issue on place like Facebook, where you use your actual name. My friend is a journalist and he always uses Facebook to get photos of people to use in newspaper stories.

Err.... isn't that illegal? Wouldn't he have to have their permission before posting their pictures elsewhere?

Besides he shouldn't be able to access their profiles anyway unless they've set them to open access, at which point I suppose they really are asking for anyone to be able to see their pics.