A failing of Livejournal

[andrewducker]

The new notification system will tell you when you've been friended, but not when you've been unfriended.

Which means I'm currently subscribing to an external source which grabs a copy of my friends list, compares it with a cached copy, and tells me if someone unfriends me. (You can subscribe to it here if you really care, or subscribe to your own by looking at the RSS url and replacing my username with yours).

Anyway - this is _hideously_ inefficient. The data goes from the LJ database, out to a third party, and then back again, so I can see information LJ could just supply to me. Why is this, exactly? Some kind of security by obscurity?

Hell - I think I'm off to post this to lj_dev and see if I can get a straight answer there!

Comments

[sterlingspider.livejournal.com]

I use this thing
http://marnanel.org/joule

It can only tell you as of the first day you log in, but it keeps a nice clear record of friendings and unfriendings from then on.

[andrewducker]

Yes. That's what I use.

Which, as I said, is hideously inefficient, when LJ could just tell me themselves...

[sterlingspider.livejournal.com]

*nods* agreed
Though knowing LJ they wouldn't keep any kind of record of it.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

The nice thing about a third party suite is it also tells you when OTHER PEOPLE have been unFRiended (cackle)

there was a great link today to an article on the social culture of Friending - I must post it to LJ tomorrow..

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

I use this too - I keep a link to it on my profile. And I usually know how many people have me friended (*slightly ashamed*) so if the number goes down, I check that to see who's gone.

[call-waiting.livejournal.com]

It's not security through obscurity, as such. They don't provide the information because, in theory, you shouldn't care about this information. Only incredibly insecure people should care about things like that. And LiveJournal doesn't have any insec... uh....

...you know, they could probably save a ton of db load by providing that directly.

[rahaeli.livejournal.com]

As Abe said in lj_dev, it's just honestly that we're lazy we haven't gotten to it yet :) I think it's on the list.

[andrewducker]

And yet Mr Fitzpatrick seems to disagree with the pair of you, on that very entry :->

[marrog.livejournal.com]

I keep my friends and friend of list exactly balanced by only friending people when they friend me back; it's easier that way. Although even then it can be difficult to figure out who's unfriended me; have to paste it into notepad without a wordwrap and scan along the line to compare. Only after your post here did I find out that cangetmad has defriended me! I'm quite distraught! I mean, we're not close, but she's one of my favourite journals...

[andrewducker]

Good Lord. How terribly low tech :->

I also recommend the semagic LJ client, which makes it much easier to put links/pics/user-icons in to your posts _and_ keeps track of changes in your friends list.