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I'm planning to assemble a Twitter list of Gaming.SE users from @StackGaming, and just wanted to give a little information about the purpose and process.

Purpose of the list: The purpose of the list will be to make it easier for us at Stack Exchange and the gaming community at large to follow and communicate with great Gaming.SE users on twitter. We plan to start using @StackGaming for more than just pushing out questions, and part of that will involve highlighting awesome active users in the Gaming.SE community. We won't use this list to spam you with unwanted information, it's just a way for us to say "hey, these people are awesome, and if you're into Gaming you should follow them."

Assembling the list: We will start with a list of everyone who has their twitter handle in their profile. We'll then go through that list and narrow it down to people who are regularly active on Gaming.SE and who are regularly active on twitter - including regular tweets that would be of interest to other gamers who are not currently part of our community. The list will probably end up being relatively short, and will grow and change over time as we get new users. We will not put users on this list who rarely participate on gaming.SE, have low reputation, or who never tweet about gaming topics, so if your Twitter handle is listed on your gaming.SE profile because you just copied your profile from another site, don't worry that you'll suddenly be followed by hundreds of gamers.

If for any reason you don't want to be included on the list, please let me know by responding to this post. Also, if you do want to be on the list, please make sure your twitter handle is in your user profile.

Thanks!

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    Where, exactly, should my Twitter handle go in my user profile? There's no direct field for it.
    – Invader Skoodge
    Feb 21, 2012 at 17:26
  • Presumably in your bio. It's where I just tossed mine. (Not that it's hard to figure out...)
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    Feb 21, 2012 at 17:31
  • @StrixVaria I have mine as my website. :)
    – user11502
    Feb 21, 2012 at 18:48
  • Where are you drawing your info (of our Twitters) from?
    – Raven Dreamer
    Feb 21, 2012 at 21:02
  • @RavenDreamer from your user profile, if you have it in there.
    – Lauren
    Feb 21, 2012 at 21:35
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    @Lauren Are you planning to update your list periodically or is there a deadline for editing profiles to include Twitter info?
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Feb 22, 2012 at 4:27
  • I'll update it periodically. Not sure how often, but it's not meant to be an unchanging/one-time list.
    – Lauren
    Feb 22, 2012 at 18:25
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    I, for one, welcome my new follower overlords
    – juan
    Feb 22, 2012 at 21:55

3 Answers 3

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I don't want to be on this list (as an aside, this really should be an opt-in list, not opt-out).

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    Hmm... Twitter is kinda public by design, anyone can follow you or add you to lists without your consent, unless you set your tweets to private of course, but that's just silly... You have Facebook for that.
    – juan
    Feb 22, 2012 at 11:27
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    For what it's worth, this is effectively opt-in. If your Twitter account isn't in your user profile, (as yours isn't, though I've no way to know if you just changed it), you won't be added to the list. You only need to opt-out if you've already added that information to your public profile on Gaming.SE in the first place.
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    Feb 22, 2012 at 14:36
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    No problem, won't include you. And as @LessPop_MoreFizz says, it is effectively opt-in because we will only include people who have their Twitter handles listed in their profiles (I won't go searching for it elsewhere, promise).
    – Lauren
    Feb 22, 2012 at 16:02
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    Following up on what @JuanManuel said, you can't be contacted via a Twitter list. It's a read-only affair and if you want to choose who follows you or reads your tweets, maybe a public Twitter account isn't for you.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Feb 22, 2012 at 17:27
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    @Lauren I just don't think people should have to do anything, like make sure they find this meta post, to opt themselves out from this list had they happened to have their Twitter handle in their profile. Why query everyone's profile indiscriminately if the people who actually want to be on the list can just as easily reply to this thread and say, "yeah, that sounds awesome!"
    – user3389
    Feb 22, 2012 at 18:38
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    @JuanManuel Because we live in polite society where asking before doing something, even if you can and it's easy to do, is appreciated and expected? I hate that I now have to worry about what information in the future SE is going to decide should be on a public contact list somewhere just because I happened to have it in my SE profile. The expectation was that the information in my profile is my business card, not license for SE to create contact lists from any public information it can scrape from it.
    – user3389
    Feb 22, 2012 at 18:41
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    You do realize that your SE profile is public, don't you? I really don't get what you mean if you do.
    – juan
    Feb 22, 2012 at 18:47
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    @JuanManuel I am fully aware my SE profile is public. Public does not mean anything goes: doesn't mean it in the real world, nor online. Stack Exchange made a privacy policy to explain what it—and its employees—would do with my information: nowhere does it say "from time to time, we'll make Twitter lists of people on the site who put their handles in their profiles unless they opt-out". It explicitly says even though providing public information might increase unwanted third-party communication, SE'll only use it in a specific way.
    – user3389
    Feb 22, 2012 at 18:57
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    @MarkTrapp I'm sorry if I come across as condescending; it's not at all my intent. But... what contact list? I don't know what the planned use for this Twitter list is, but it can't be used to spam you with stuff. It's more like an aggregate of people's updates into one feed. Read only. If you have a Twitter account listed in your public SE profile, I can go read your tweets right now or add you to one of my lists and I certainly don't have to ask your permission to do that. How is this different?
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Feb 22, 2012 at 18:58
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    @AnnaLear It wouldn't be different because you're an employee of SE: SE's privacy policy places a higher standard on what it can do with my information, even acknowledging third parties are not held up to that standard. Having a Twitter list adds value to Stack Exchange's Twitter presence: it gives people an aggregate list of people with similar interests (great for Twitter spam) and adds a link back to the SE account on every profile it adds because Twitter lists get attached to the person who's been added. It's using user info for marketing, something the privacy policy says SE won't do.
    – user3389
    Feb 22, 2012 at 19:07
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    I still don't understand why it has to be done this way (SE scrapes everyone's public profiles, and then you can opt-out if it happens to get your Twitter handle) and not done completely opt-in (if you want to be part of the list, add your Twitter handle to this thread).
    – user3389
    Feb 22, 2012 at 19:11
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    @MarkTrapp My Twitter presence is unaffiliated with any of my employers, but that aside... IANAL, but if no private information is being accessed, I don't see how any privacy policy is being violated. Nobody is sharing anything that you aren't already making publicly available. What do you mean by the link from Twitter back to the SE account?
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Feb 22, 2012 at 19:13
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    @MarkTrapp I'm still not following how getting the name of the user who created the list links back to individual SE profiles or reveals private information. IANAL again, but I also don't think using Twitter lists as they are intended constitutes renting/selling of information that you aren't already revealing. If we were scraping your privately listed email to find your Twitter account, that'd be a breach. (With the obvious caveat that I could be wrong. As always, any concerns about the privacy policy and use of information can be directed to the "contact us" link at the bottom of the page.)
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Feb 22, 2012 at 19:38
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    I agree it should be opt-in ... some people don't even come to Meta.
    – Marcelo
    Feb 22, 2012 at 20:05
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    @badp My objection still stands even if it's not specifically a Twitter list, although "I'm planning to assemble a Twitter list" is a pretty good sign what's being created is a Twitter list.
    – user3389
    Feb 23, 2012 at 0:10
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I'll opt out as well.

I disagree with Mark about this being against the letter of SE's policies, but I certainly think it goes against the spirit.

What I've put in my profile is what I want people to see when they view my profile, not information I want people to distribute. (That expectation is not always met, but I would expect SE to meet it.) My Twitter account is public because there's no middle ground like "friends of friends". I regularly block people who follow me at random with no substantial prior interaction.

I've also left* a few Twitter lists of SE users before, though they were created by a normal user and not SE. (Edit: Yeah, from that Brian Bondy guy, lol.)

* "Left" being a loose term; you have to block the creator of the list.

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I reserve the right to ask to be considered for inclusion at some later date, but for now I would like to be excluded from the list (assuming I even qualify of course).

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