Off to thank romanyg for a completely unexpected gift. See, bev? You are definitely not the only one.

Dana, I *always* mess up the cut tags.

OT, but since LiveJournal has already come up here, I've got a question. (Just got sucked into the LJ thing and am still learning...)

What is the etiquette of adding someone to your "friends" list? I'd like to friend a few journalers I read often, to make it easier to keep up with new entries, but I don't know any of them from a hole in the ground. Is it accepted that perfect strangers might friend you, or is it considered a little skeevy?

It's accepted. LJ is working on separating the concept of "friends" (people I know intimately and who are allowed to read my private entries) and "reading list" (peoples whose journals I find interesting), but at the moment the two are intertwined in the friendslist. I friend several people who don't friend me, simply because they don't know me from Adam's off ox.

But, you can make "custom" Friends -- or a "custom friends list" -- which means that you can send things to people that, for example, you wouldn't want everyone in all the communities you are a member of to read.

Dani, I only recently learned that it's considered polite to make a post commenting in their journal that you friended them and why.

Totally accepted. And Dani, I'm debg, so friend me if you like, and I'll friend you right back again.

Sometimes you meet nice new people that way -- I have at least one person completely unconnected to the rest of my life who friended me because, I think, of Brust and the martial arts. Turns out she's fen, and we have a fair amount in common, so I friended her back.

Others, NSM.

What Betsy said. It's considered nice to comment shortly after you friend someone so they know why this strange person wants to read about them, but I've skipped that a few times, and had people skip it a few times in friending me. Edit: Massively x-posted.

you wouldn't want everyone in all the communities you are a member of to read.

I thought that, while a friends-locked entry in a community could be read by anyone in the community, friends-locked entries in personal journals could only be read by people on your personal f'list, so I don't need to worry about all 700 members of buffy_icons knowing about my therapy appointment from the community's friends page.

But yes, filters are handy things when you aren't too lazy to use them.

Thanks for the tips, everyone. Good to know.

Deb, I will definitely take you up on that offer later today.