The problem with LJ's setup is that friending both adds that person to your reading list, and allows them access to your locked entries. And to me, those two actions don't always go together. There are people whose blogs I find interesting who I don't think need to know about my personal life. (The solution is to add them to my Bloglines roll instead of my LJ friendslist, but it's not ideal.)

There are a few people on my flist who I've lost track of who they are here. I never ask because I don't want to look insensitive/stupid.

Jessica, I think you can group lj friends, and then make your friendslocked entries only accessible to those in certain groups. So you could have a "read 'em, but don't wanna tell 'em about my love life" group and a "TMI buddies" group and so on.

They can't, but you can avoid compliant search engines without friendslocking, which is why I asked.

Google's blog search was showing friendslocked posts for a few days, but I believe they've fixed it now. (If you clicked through to the locked post, you got LJ's "you don't have sufficient permission" page, but the first few lines did show up in the search results.)

Jessica, I think you can group lj friends, and then make your friendslocked entries only accessible to those in certain groups. So you could have a "read 'em, but don't wanna tell 'em about my love life" group and a "TMI buddies" group and so on.

Oh, believe me, I've got filters up the wazoo. But it's a PITA to custom-lock every single entry.

my lj ID is riani1. I keep thinking of changing my name here or there, but LJ is just a little too open for me to use my real name over there. Sure, this is a public form and all that, but it's a bit more exclusive and harder to find, and I always keep in mind that that's my name there. I seem to be lacking in the fear of internet stalkers and whatnot.

There are people whose blogs I find interesting who I don't think need to know about my personal life.

Yup. That's why I use custom friends groups heavily.

But it's a PITA to custom-lock every single entry.

So yes. I'd really love it if LJ separated the "people I read" and "people who can read me" lists.

The problem with LJ's setup is that friending both adds that person to your reading list, and allows them access to your locked entries. And to me, those two actions don't always go together. There are people whose blogs I find interesting who I don't think need to know about my personal life. (The solution is to add them to my Bloglines roll instead of my LJ friendslist, but it's not ideal.)

Yes. This. And of course filters are a way around that, but they can be cumbersome, if like me, you make basically useless filter names and then have to go look through to see who is on it, and then have to decide if you want to share the personal thing with all those people.

I usually get over my need to post the private stuff before I feel like creating a new filter.

I think you can group lj friends, and then make your friendslocked entries only accessible to those in certain groups. So you could have a "read 'em, but don't wanna tell 'em about my love life" group and a "TMI buddies" group and so on.

You can do that with filters, but it can get complicated.

For me, the distinction between basic friendslocking and not is ... am I using full (first) names, or talking about krav in a way that makes it simple to identify the real people ... am I talking about work in a less than cheery way ... do I want my parents to be able to read this ...

It's all approximation anyway.

I imagine no one reads my blog for long without recognising me. I'm that diverse and exciting in subject matter.

Jessica, I think you can group lj friends, and then make your friendslocked entries only accessible to those in certain groups. So you could have a "read 'em, but don't wanna tell 'em about my love life" group and a "TMI buddies" group and so on.

This is what I do. I don't friendslock as a general rule, but I almost never do just the basic lock. I have a handful of groups, and the ones that see use are the "Internet Ax Murderers," which is mostly buffistas, and a general RL group that usually only gets used if we're trying to plan something.