sharing vs. following

• Adding someone to an aspect would grant them access to your profile - you are now sharing with them
• Following someone does not give access to the person - you are only following their public posts, or whatever posts they are exposing to you.

Umm, am I missing something? This is exactly what happens now, and has always been the case, in diaspora.

@loelo i thought about that, too. I think the problem is, this will get too complicated from a ui point of view. A user first would have to manage his aspects. And i think users are lazy. If i have the possibilities share and follow directly as a one- or two-click action (think of the aspect-dropdown) this will be much more straight-forward.
If the proposal is accepted, i'd also propose a "following"-entry in the left nav-bar, which will show all posts of accounts you are following.
@goob the sharing functionality has always been there. What is new, is the following-functionality.
I've written down some possible states. I hope they'll help to clarify the proposal:
a)
Bob follows Alice. Alice doesn't follow or share with Bob.
=> Bob will see all public posts of Alice in his stream.
[Alice won't see Bob's private profile, if she visits his page. I'd also propose not to mention Alice at all, that Bob is following her. However, a follower-count on Alice's profile page would be nice (like on Twitter).]
b)
Bob follows Alice. Alice follows Bob.
=> They both will see each others public posts in their stream, but can not access each others profiles.
c)
Bob follows Alice. Alice shares with Bob.
=> Bob will see Alices public posts and all posts from the aspect Alice put him in. Bob also will see Alice's profile. Alice can not see Bob's profile. Alice will see Bob's public posts in her stream.
d)
Bob shares with Alice. Alice shares with Bob.
=> Both will see each others public posts, as well as all posts from the aspects they are put in. Also, they will see each others profiles.

Maybe the solution is simply to upgrade the aspect concept. Aspects can be so much more than just a group of users, if we give the possibility to configure each of our aspects, we could say that you don't want to share your stuff with the users in this specific aspect.

We can even add more granularity later on.

Edit:
Just seen @loelo's post which is the same proposition.

@kas: I disagree, in D* when you want to see someone's posts, you simply add him/her in an aspect. If you start to add possibilities in this simple process, you'll add more complexities right at the beginning.

Also, if we don't have an aspect for the user we follow, where would be listed the followed users? We'll have to create a new kind of group for all the followed users or, worse, we'll have to check each of our users to see which of them we are just following or sharing with.

I think the possibility to configure your aspects is much more elegant. By default (when creating a new account), we could create a Followed aspect that is pre-configured to only follow people. Of course, if the aspect config can be changed (or not... it's a design choice).

Thanks for the input. I'm not 100% sure which is the best way.
I've created a quick mockup (sorry for the bad quality), which shows the way i thought of and personally would consider very convenient. Imho it would be more complex to adjust the settings for each aspect than having one more option in the dropdown. For sure, it should be clear, what happens if you follow an account. Therefore, i propose a small popup when hovering over "follow" (second pic).
Implementing this using the aspect-system probably is not a bad idea (@denschub would this be a possibility to prevent a db blow up?), but i think following should be standard and not an editable aspect. I also think sharing and following should be separated in the general diaspora environment. Diaspora was always about controlling your (social) data. Following would be an enhancement of this concept.

Thanks for the mockups, it's clearer now and actually I quite like it.

The only question that I have is: how can I see the users I'm following? And to answer that I only see an aspect. So could it be possible to have an predefined, not editable aspect called "Follow" where the users in it (and in no other aspect) won't be able to see you private profile?

:) glad you like it.
I think that should be possible.

@jhass
I've made a UX proposal above:

If the proposal is accepted, i’d also propose a “following”-entry in the left nav-bar, which will show all posts of accounts you are following.

what do you mean with duplicating aspects?

there should be an option to follow an account without sharing your profile.

I see no need for this in Diaspora. It isn't Twitter. However, I would only be happy for such a feature to implemented if a user setting was implemented enabling a user to prevent people from anonymously following their account. I wouldn't want anyone following me anonymously.

I wouldn't want anyone following me anonymously.

You can't prevent someone from following your public profile. To me this goes too deep in the private data paranoia.