Disable whitelist

[mtcjayne]

Background
Some users don't like the idea of the extension being enabled by default on various sites and would, instead, like to manually enable the extension for any site they want to be flattred. Therefore we should allow users to change the extension's default behavior when determining whether automatic flattring should be enabled on a site.

We probably still want to consider blocked sites such as www.youtube.com/my_videos though to prevent the extension from flattring those.

What to change

• Add toggle to options page to switch between three states:
  • Enable flattring on all sites
    Treat any preset entries that have STATUS_DISABLED or STATUS_UNDEFINED as STATUS_ENABLED
  • Enable flattring on selected sites (default)
  • Disable flattring on all sites
    Treat any preset entries that have STATUS_ENABLED or STATUS_UNDEFINED as STATUS_DISABLED
• Keep treating preset entries that have STATUS_BLOCKED as such
• Explicitly mention value in data collection to avoid misinterpretation of status data

Original post
I feel frustrated that you don't offer a way to disable the whitelist you supply because it puts me in a position where I am using my monthly subscription to support websites I don't care about (whether because the sites I care about aren't active Flattr users or because I simply haven't flattered anything) instead of saving it to support websites I do care about.

There are several websites on that list that just seem seedy, for example let's say I want to support a fictional popular filesharing site The Pretty Boy. They are incredibly popular but they're not on the list. Several copycat domains are which may or may not be under the control of or offer the same content as the original. It might not even be safe to visit at all.

Then we have the hot websites all the kids love, such as 0430.com, a "web library" (remember those from the 90s?) that offers up original content and useful links to carefully curated websites. Maybe as one of the 8,725 individuals living in Murray county, Minnesota you'd like to visit murraycountynews.net to catch up on the latest happenings. I personally bookmarked tahiti-virus.org so that I can be the first to find out when their website is built!

Almost 900 thousand lines are in this file.

[bonq]

What you are asking for is to disable the whitelist so you would need to enable it on every site you want to use it on, right?

[mtcjayne]

Yes

[bonq]

Understood! The harder question where to put the option and how to communicate what it actually does. We will look into it!

[da2x]

where to put the option

The extension already has a preference page that is integrated with the browsers. It’s shown on the installed extension page and when you right click the extension button. Currently only used for the optional data collection option only.

I’d actually want the opposite option: whitelist all the things! Three-state switch?
Flattr-everything | Flattr-whitelist (default) | Flattr-nothing

[ThomasGreiner]

We've agreed on appending such a toggle to the options page. I've updated the issue description to reflect that and would like to point out that we'd probably still want to consider that the extension shouldn't flattr certain sites.

[ThomasGreiner]

Just FYI: Now that I've started working on this, I found that there's more to it than meets the eye. For instance, we also need to make sure that the data we collect stays unambiguous as well as we need to come up with a design for the three-way toggle.

[da2x]

need to come up with a design for the three-way toggle.

Vertical slider (or simple radio boxes also work here) ASCII mockup:

[bold label] Websites to automatically Flattr

|- All websites
|  Every website can receive my contributions.
|
|- Verified by Flattr [default selection]
|  Family friendly and quality websites as checked by Flattr. Reduces contributions to lower quality content.
|
|- My selection
|  I’ll manually enable Flattr on websites I want to support. (Tip: export to backup your list.)

[label] You can manage your contributions and see which websites receive funds on your Flattr Dashboard [link].

You could compact it down to one label and one drop-down menu selection. Though I believe that would result in some extra support tickets asking about the differences between the options.

[ThomasGreiner]

I was also thinking about some simple radio buttons (see current design) to keep the implementation simple.

Two things to note:

• I'll leave the texts to our Content & Translations team but I'll make sure to forward them the ones you're suggesting.
• For now we want to be careful and not include the "flattr everything" option. While we do have certain safeguards in place to prevent certain sites from receiving money through flattrs (e.g. sites with illegal content), we also want to protect the user from accidentally flattring those in the first place.
  This is something we could easily revisit at a later point in time though.

[da2x]

(see current design)

Those are checkboxes not radio boxes (square vs round, type=checkbox vs type=radio). You can only select one radio box in a group while you can check multiple checkboxes. Radios is the right standard controller to use in that design. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/input/radio

[ThomasGreiner]

It's a work-in-progress so the design is still expected to change, especially since we don't have the final strings yet.