Care to describe "My Fluther" for those of us who don't have it?

We see everything you do.

j/k

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My Fluther is a like a mix between “All” questions and “Just for you”. If a person I’m “following” (a new feature) is following a question, then it shows up in My Fluther.

So My Fluther is really an amalgamation of the questions being followed by every person I follow.

Also, I get +2 lurve each time a person elects to follow me.

First I’ve heard of it. Is this a beta program or something?

yah, beta testing. Maybe alpha testing, even.

Here is My Fluther (it’s very incomplete since i keep forgetting to add people) ooooh and i just added rob but you can’t see it in the screenshot

People who are doing the testing are able to see each other’s “fluther” as part of the profile page. When you are on the main page, we have an additional tab which shows us only our activity and the activity of those in our fluther.

I skipped that function; it felt like a popularity contest to me and also additional work. Plus, I like all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time and only a few people none of the time (until they surprise me.)

i agree about it feeling like a popularity contest. which is why i emailed the mods the day the feature started, asking them to at least make the everyone’s “my fluther” private. i am sure they will see what works best and decide accordingly.

I think it’s good for people that I’m following to know that I’m following them. And I think it’s okay for other people to know who I’m following—since that may help them figure out who else they’d like to follow as well.

But I agree with PnL about the popularity contest aspect. Perhaps that aspect can be limited by hiding or de-emphasizing the number of people who are following me when other people view my profile page…? (Just tossing the idea out there for what it’s worth.)

I must admit, though, that I’m sorta dreading the day the spammers come along and start adding everyone they can find to their account’s ‘my fluther’ just to get people to look at their profile and click through to their site.

Following the example of Twitter, it’s helpful to see who’s following who. Flip side, like Twitter, watchout for the spammers who follow you just so you’ll check out who they are and possibly buy some of their wares.

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I’m leaning more towards an “open” approach to other people’s My Fluther. For example, when I was setting up My Fluther, I really found it helpful to see which people were being followed by the ones I was following myself.

Further, I think that My Fluther in its current incarnation acts more like a limiter that prevents me from seeing things. That’s fine when that’s what I want… but I think I’d like more control. Ability to sort and filter based on criteria I specify. Allow me to really make it My Fluther. For that to work, the fluther gods will need to surface some of the currently inaccessible attributes of a Question, like:

> specifically who’s following it
> specifically who’s answered it
> specifically who got a GA on it
> datetime stamps
> total GAs awarded in a Question
> total # of followers
> total # of quips
> # of quips / # of followers
> etc.

NOTE: most of those criteria are visible to us today. Not secret or personal at all. We’d just need to read and manually collate the data. I want those attribs available as sort/filter criteria in My Fluther.

When it matures to a certain point, I doubt there will be a need to differentiate between Questions for You and My Fluther. It’ll all just be My Fluther.

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The gist of this has already been posted to Man o’ War.

Don’t mean to be a goody goody, but was the veil of secrecy lifted? I thought at one point we weren’t supposed to talk about this?

Do people think it does what they want? I do like quick access to people I want to follow. Following to me means checking back to see a certain answer, quickly being able to PM someone without having to find them in a thread.

I have been trying to figure out whether I want to follow certain people’s questions or not. I am not sure I do. I have other ways of getting at those.

I was also trying to figure out if there was something else I would want my Fluther to do.

I know that may be controversial, but I wondered whether I would like the ability to put a question out to just My Fluther?

@Marina, I wasn’t given any guidelines re: the secrecy of My Fluther… especially since it was called out in the second Fluther podcast.

I did ask @andrew recently if we’d be allowed to discuss with the unwashed masses of the Collective… but got no reply on that particular point. I wasn’t going to bring it up then.

But then this Q popped, and what they hey, I answered.

<sniffs armpits>

btw @marina…

I dig the “quick access to people”. And I also wonder about posting Q’s just to the members of “My Fluther”. In the past, I think that’s been discussed and collectively considered a Bad Idea as it might lead to clique-ishness.

It’s certainly a challenge trying to draw the line between socialization and flutherization. I think the fluther gods are doing well, taking small steps, and being open to collaborating with the user community.

Yeah, as some one who just found out about MyFluther, I am now sad, and would have preferred to stay blissfully ignorant to my second-rate way of fluthering.

I’m still wondering if I did the right thing by submitting my feedback through the regular feedback function. Didn’t get any acknowledgement, so have no idea.

Hmm….that reminds me of another feedback to send…...

Can My Fluther members currently only follow other My Fluther members?

Can follow anyone. Only other beta-testers will see +2 lurve though when you “follow” them, though (I think).

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@monsoon, et al,

Just speaking for myself, I have no “special status” other than what I invent in my own head. How’d I get in on the goodness then? Check out my comment in the blog entry for the second podcast.

You see? Here’s what I did:

1. Watched the podcast. Heard about My Fluther.
2. Posted request in the comments asking to join in the testing.

I dunno if the fluther gods are accepting more testers. But if you send a PM to @andrew or @ben, they’ll let you know.

@Harp
No, I’ve added people that seemingly don’t have the feature yet (or they’re just not curious about how it works and therefore haven’t added anyone)

@monsoon
I wouldn’t worry about it. It hasn’t changed the way I used the site at all. I don’t even use the features that are in place now.

@johnpowell: you refreshed until that greeting came up, didn’t you?

no

i don’t use the features either…so far

@wildflower: Yes! We received your (and everyone’s) comments! Thank you!

We’re still going through some major tweaks of the algorithm before we release it to everyone, but the number of people with the feature keeps growing.

We’ve also been working on a special version of Fluther for johnpowell.

Yaay! Thanks for confirming, Andrew!

why in that fake screenshot that andrew posted does my question (boats) have 2 responses but in actuality here it has no responses

@andrew Thanks for the update.

@robmandu Your points are all thoughtful and valid as usual. The cliquishness potential was why I hesitated about narrow release questions. I was not so much thinking of now as later when the site gets as huge and popular as we know it will.

Sometimes I hate wading through crap when I really am interested in a subject. For example, I was looking for new and interesting chicken recipes from fellow cooks and got this helpful response: “Freerange.” Or, even worse, I am really interested in education reform and asked a question about what people think would be good additions to school curriculums. I got some wonderful answers, but could have done with this one: “How not to be a liberal!!!!!” BTW, I would felt the same way if it took the opposite political tack. On the other hand, even writing this, I know I am willing to wade through crap in order not to miss the hidden gem from someone I didn’t expect it from or who was new.

I’ll have my everlasting gob stopper, off the shelf, like everybody else, when Mr. Wonka is finished with it. I wouldn’t want to look like Veruca Salt with her hand outstretched.