ForumsNewsPrivate folders, contexts and goals are now visually marked


Private folders, contexts and goals are now visually marked
Author Message
Jake

Toodledo Founder
Posted: May 08, 2012
Score: 0 Reference
If you have private folders, contexts or goals, they will now be visually marked with a ♦ symbol. This will make it easier to know which tasks are visible to your collaborators and which ones are not.

We have also relaxed the naming rules. You can now use single and double quotes in your folder, context, goal and location names.
thinkingliberally

Posted: May 09, 2012
Score: 0 Reference
For people who use different statuses (i.e. some public and some private folders) it makes sense to somehow indicate which are which by using visual icons. However, for people who have all of their folders private and do not collaborate, the diamonds are really annoying and make the screen much more cluttered - they also attract the eye and become very distracting. Please remove them - or at least create a setting that allows users to choose whether or not they want these indicators to display!!!!!!!
Purveyor

Posted: May 09, 2012
Score: -1 Reference
Posted by thinkingliberally:
However, for people who have all of their folders private and do not collaborate, the diamonds are really annoying and make the screen much more cluttered
If you do not collaborate, why do you have folders that are private?
JPR

Posted: May 09, 2012
Score: 1 Reference
What Purveyor said. But thanks for the inspiration, thinkingliberally. I might just use that private marking precisely when I want a certain folders to be annoying and attract the eye!
MM1772

Posted: May 09, 2012
Score: 2 Reference
I was going to mention the same thing about it being annoying if you don't collaborate.

Purveyor - Good question. I made certain folders private *in case* I decided later to collaborate. Since I'm not going to collaborate, I might as well make them non-private.

JPR - Great idea!
dontomp

Posted: May 12, 2012
Score: 1 Reference
Sorry, this is all backwards, IMHO.

I find it absurd that I have to take action and explicity mark stuff as "private". Noone should ever be able to see anything of mine, unless I decide to share it somehow.

It is the stuff that's visible to others that should have markers, not my private stuff.

At least give us the option to hide the markers.
Jake

Toodledo Founder
Posted: May 13, 2012
Score: 0 Reference
Nobody can see anything of yours unless you decide to share it somehow. One way of sharing is to share all of your non-private tasks. This is the scenario where you would make a private folder. If you do not share, then you do not need to make private folders.
SES21

Posted: May 16, 2012
Score: 0 Reference
I have to agree with dontomp - it seems backwards. I'd prefer that things that *are* shared have visual markers rather than the other way around. That way, if there's a visual marker on something I don't want anyone else to see, it attracts my eye to go fix it! Otherwise the arrows are like having too many, too frequent reminders, you become immune to them & they no longer register in your mind. In fact, it's easier to miss the ones without the markers.

Love ya, Jake, mean it but FB has taught me that you should lock everything down to be on the safe side! Just sayin'...

P.S. It seems like it would take fewer system resources for TD to mark only the shared items instead of the private ones.


This message was edited May 16, 2012.
Jake

Toodledo Founder
Posted: May 16, 2012
Score: 0 Reference
In order to know if a folder is shared, we have to check if you have sharing enabled, which includes checking for private collaboration, rss feeds enabled, iCal links enabled, and in the future perhaps other things. Its much easier to check if a folder is private and mark it as such.

Everything is private by default, even if you don't use private folders. Private folders are only needed when you have chosen to share all of your tasks with someone. It enables you to hide a few folders. It is not necessary to mark any of your folders private if you are not using our sharing tools.
dontomp

Posted: May 17, 2012
Score: 0 Reference
I don't understand.

On the Manage Folders page, it says:

"If you are using our collaboration tools, the 'private' checkbox will prevent tasks with that folder from being shared."

That suggests to me that if I want to collaborate with anyone, and I do, I have to remember to mark every folder with tasks I *don't* want to share as private. It suggests that any collaborator can see everything of mine unless I take action and hide it by marking the folder as private.

I hope I am wrong because I find that very counter-intuitive and it makes me reluctant to collaborate via Toodledo at all. What if I forget to hide a folder? What about tasks which have not been assigned a folder?

Just saw this:

"Private folders are only needed when you have chosen to share all of your tasks with someone"

What does that mean, specifically? That private folders are only needed if one has marked the checkbox to share all folders with a collaborator? Because that is not the same as just "using" your collaboration tools (see quote above).

When would someone want to share all their tasks with someone else anyway? For example, I expect most people want to use the same Toodledo account for both work-related and personal tasks. And isn't that what you want? How often do those spheres overlap with someone else's to make it useful for him/her to see all folders by default?
Purveyor

Posted: May 17, 2012
Score: 1 Reference
Posted by dontomp:
When would someone want to share all their tasks with someone else anyway?
It's not that someone would want to share all tasks. It's that someone wants to share all tasks except some tasks. Easier in that case to choose what not to share by specifying private folders.

If, though, you want to share just a couple of folders with one person, then you can do that without specifying any private folders.

Take a look at "Private Sharing" and "Private Folders" here:
http://www.toodledo.com/info/sharing.php

In essence, you have a choice of how to choose, and you can use a combination of choices.


This message was edited May 17, 2012.
JPR

Posted: May 17, 2012
Score: 0 Reference
I don't use collaboration, but I might in the future. I do understand the concerns here, and I think it does make sense to have the private tag checked as the default. And with private being the default setting, it would then make sense to have the marker indicate shared (or not private) items.

The key factor here is privacy and it should be the default. (see Facebook outrage) The user should have to act to make something shared, not the other way around. Maybe there could be a checkbox on the various "Manage" pages like "Mark New Folders Private". Just my 2 cents.
Jake

Toodledo Founder
Posted: May 17, 2012
Score: 1 Reference
Everything is private by default. You have to specifically turn on sharing to share anything. When you share with someone, you can give them selective access to individual folders. No other folders will be shared.

You can also choose to give them access to "all folders". If you choose this latter option then you can use "private folders" to hide a few of them. This is the purpose of private folders, so if you don't share "all folders" with anyone then you dont need private folders.
Andrew

Posted: May 18, 2012
Score: -1 Reference
If it is much easier to check whether a folder is private, why not check if it is private and pur a marker if it is not private instead of checking if public?
Jake

Toodledo Founder
Posted: May 18, 2012
Score: 0 Reference
@Andrew Because "not private" is not the same thing as "public".

Clearly, we have some semantic issues that we need to work out to make it easier to understand. Think of it this way, there are four levels of privacy for a folder.

1) Super Private. You have clicked the "private" checkbox on the folder organization page. This folder will never be shared with anyone under any circumstance.

2) Private. The default setting. All folders start this way. The folder is private unless you choose to share it with someone.

3) Shared. You have chosen to share the folder with a particular person. Only they can see it.

4) Public. You have published your list to the public for anyone in the world to see.

We use the diamond to indicate state #1 because we think that it is more useful to know at a glance that your sensitive information is private.
tajmari

Posted: May 20, 2012
Score: -1 Reference
Posted by Toodledo:
In order to know if a folder is shared, we have to check if you have sharing enabled, which includes checking for private collaboration, rss feeds enabled, iCal links enabled, and in the future perhaps other things. Its much easier to check if a folder is private and mark it as such.

Everything is private by default, even if you don't use private folders. Private folders are only needed when you have chosen to share all of your tasks with someone. It enables you to hide a few folders. It is not necessary to mark any of your folders private if you are not using our sharing tools.


Thanks for the advice. I made all my folders except two private when I tried out sharing with my daughter and her dad. I will "un-private" them to remove the annoying diamonds. I'm grateful for improvements to TD. However, the reasoning that it is easier for the developers to place diamonds next to folders marked private tells me that they probably need to step back and think like users rather than developers.

I agree with the other posters who would rather have a visual indicator for folders that are shared than the ones that are private -- Most people probably only share a few folders and assume that the rest are private. Marking the "super private" folders causes confusion. What difference is there between "super private" and "private"? There shouldn't be any effective difference. No one but me should be able to see my folders if I haven't shared them.


This message was edited May 20, 2012.
compt Post deleted
Jake

Toodledo Founder
Posted: May 22, 2012
Score: 0 Reference
We are going to work on this to make it more clear how privacy works. What we have done just now is to remove the diamond from displaying in the lists, but we kept them in the sidebar and in the popup "edit folder" menus, which is where it is most important to know when something is private or not. This should reduce the visual overhead of seeing hundreds of diamonds in the list while retaining the information when it is needed.
dontomp

Posted: May 27, 2012
Score: 1 Reference
I am very glad to hear that you are working on this.

My suggestion is to scrap the whole "Super Private concept. If sharing/collaboration really worked as I believe most users expect, i.e. noone can see anything of mine unless I authorize it, then there would be no need for "Super Private" folders, goals, tags, or whatever.
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