Diaspora/Website

If you are displaying contacts from all aspects (click <span class="click">My contacts</span> in the sidebar), each contact will have a green button to its right showing which aspect(s) they have been placed in. If a contact is in more than one aspect, the button will read “In <em>n</em> aspects.” Click the button to see which aspects those are.

You can click this button to change the aspect(s) this person is in by selecting and deselecting aspects in the drop-down list. If you want to remove a person from all of your aspects, deselect all aspects and the button will turn grey. You are no longer sharing with them.

If you are viewing contacts in an individual aspect, there will be a cross to the right of each contact displayed. Clicking this will remove the person from that aspect.

You can also create new aspects from your contacts page.

Only sharing with me

This shows you a list of people who are sharing with you but with whom you are not sharing – your “followers.”

Now that you understand aspects, let’s make some connections.

Part 4 – Finding and connecting with people

How to connect with people

It’s now time to add some contacts to the “Diaspora” aspect you just created. If you already know people who are using diaspora*, you can find them and add them to any aspect you like.

Sharing

We call connecting with someone “sharing” because it’s an indication that you want to share content with them. Sharing in diaspora* can seem a bit confusing at first, because your levels of sharing with other people are unlikely to be the same as their levels of sharing with you. Let’s try to make sense of what that means.

On diaspora* there are three types of relations between users:

Followers

Someone has placed you into one of their aspects, but you haven’t done likewise for them. You will get a notification that this person has “started sharing with you” but you won’t notice any other change.

They will see your public posts in their stream, but none of your limited posts.

There’s no way to tell which aspect someone else has placed you in, for privacy reasons – it’s their business which of their aspects they place each person in, so no one else can find out.

Following

You are sharing with a person who is not sharing with you. This means that you have added them to one (or more) of your aspects, but they have not added you to their aspects.

The person you are following will have access to posts you have made to the aspect(s) you have placed them in as well as your public posts, and you will start receiving their public posts in your stream.