When see in forums that a user wrote a blog when i click on it under their avatar I get a message telling me that I'm not not allowed to read other people's blogs
Go to "My Settings", then at the very bottom of the menu click "Blog". Then go to "Blog options" and you can change the visibility settings there.
It seems like most people have their blogs set to private. In fact pretty much every time I've clicked to view someone's blog, I've been told it's "private". Is "private" the automatic setting for blogs? Because I'm betting that a lot of people are writing blogs with the intention of other people reading them, and don't even realize that they are set to private. I'm sure there are some people who want their blogs to be private, but generally speaking people write blogs because they want others to read them. Is there a way to make it so that a box pops up when people create a blog so they can decide and choose whether they want to make it private or not? Or maybe send a message to everyone who has a blog letting them know that their blog is set to private and explaining how to set it to public? Because I'm sure that at least some of the 100% of people whose blogs I've tried to read but turned out be private are not even aware that their blogs are set to private.
Yeah, IIRC there was some conversation about changing the default, but we were against that because we didn't want to change privacy settings that some users might be expecting out from underneath them. However, I agree that the settings are less than optimal, and I've walked some people through changing it. Perhaps mentioning it in the help and feedback sticky. I'll bring it up with the rest of the staff.
I just checked mine, and sure enough, no one else could read my blog. The blog control panel is kind of confusing. I think there needs to be a more visibly obvious sign when a person makes a blog post on who will see their entry (sort of like how Facebook has different symbols for public, friends only, friends of friends, etc. posts). That way, people will better understand if that was their intended audience.
I added a link to a post I made awhile back in the resources sticky. I hope people actually read the stickies
