Browsing through meta I see several questions and comments where people ask for their list of favorites to be private {1} {2} {3} {4} {5} {6} {7}. There is a discussion (where I posted an answer) but no explicit feature request, so I thought I would ask: What do you think of an option to keep your list of favorites private?

Arguments:

1. People are requesting the feature {1} {2} {3} {4} {5} {6} {7}. It is my hope that by posting this question we can give people who are interested a central place to cast their votes.

2. Automatically publishing a user's favorites is a privacy concern and may discourage some people from contributing to the site. Unlike posting a question or answer, where it is expected that the information will be published and an explicit action is taken to make it public, favorites are usually used to bookmark questions for later. Publishing that information is counter-intuitive and done without user consent. See my answer here for an explanation.

3. If you want to use SE but don't want your favorites to be public, you currently have no recourse. Your options are: don't use the site, or don't use the feature. This is not ideal, as SE should encourage all willing contributors, and I do not see a good reason to make the site less functional for some than for others.

My point is: even if favorites being public is not an issue for you it is obviously an issue for some people. By addressing the issue we can make SE a more welcoming site for everyone and encourage its use, rather than discouraging people and losing valuable contributions.

Browsing through meta I see several questions and comments where people ask for their list of bookmarks to be private {1} {2} {3} {4} {5} {6} {7}. There is a discussion (where I posted an answer) but no explicit feature request, so I thought I would ask: What do you think of an option to keep your list of bookmarks private?

Arguments:

1. People are requesting the feature {1} {2} {3} {4} {5} {6} {7}. It is my hope that by posting this question we can give people who are interested a central place to cast their votes.

2. Automatically publishing a user's bookmarks is a privacy concern and may discourage some people from contributing to the site. Unlike posting a question or answer, where it is expected that the information will be published and an explicit action is taken to make it public, bookmarks are usually used to bookmark questions for later. Publishing that information is counter-intuitive and done without user consent. See my answer here for an explanation.

3. If you want to use SE but don't want your bookmarks to be public, you currently have no recourse. Your options are: don't use the site, or don't use the feature. This is not ideal, as SE should encourage all willing contributors, and I do not see a good reason to make the site less functional for some than for others.

My point is: even if bookmarks being public is not an issue for you it is obviously an issue for some people. By addressing the issue we can make SE a more welcoming site for everyone and encourage its use, rather than discouraging people and losing valuable contributions.