nattalie | (Reply)

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Took me a bit to wrap my own head around this when I came over from LJ. Everyone can read public posts, even people who stumble across your journal who have not subscribed to your journal. Subscribing to a journal is adding it to your reading list, so that your public posts are accessible to the reader through their own site. There is also the network feature on DW that collects all of the subscriptions from people on your reading list and shares the public posts with you.

When you use a private entry, only those people who you have specifically given access to in DW will be able to read that entry. So your personal posts, post about sex, etc will only be read by those people on their reading list. These posts are also not available in the network feature for friends-of-friends to read (makes sense, since you have made them private). Right now, for example you have subscribed to your my journal (so you can see my posts in your reading list), but you did not grant me access to your private posts. I've subscribed to your journal (so I can see this post in my reading list) and I have granted you access to my journal because I use restricted posts for work, rants etc (aka the juicy bits of why someone would want to follow so most people who I interact with here, and I know do not work with me by some weird chance, are given access).

There is also the access list which are lists that you make up that share specific posts inclusive of the group that you make. So if you added me and three other people to a, let's say, an access list called Cool People than posts that you write under that access list will only be available to the Cool People. Again, these posts cannot be shared on the network feature. Also, people who you have granted access but are not in the access list, will not be able to see the post.

Private (only you) are just that. Only you can see them. Period. Full stop.

Hope that helps.