Alexandre Oliva

Alexandre Oliva at

At first, I didn't even realize posts were no longer public.

Later on, IIRC I read someone saying this was the case, and stating (incorrectly) how to accomplish that.

It never occurred to me to check whether the recommendation was correct.  Sure, silly me.  Still, the (web) interface doesn't make my intent easy to express.  It doesn't even hint that it is possible.

So, yeah, I guess you can take that as criticism for a small usability issue in the pump.io web interface.  Sure, there are alternative interfaces that might or might not share this problem.  Sure, there are ways to check whether there's a problem, if you suspect there is.  Like, once I tried to make use of my pump2rss feed (that can only see public posts IIUC), it became obvious that there was a problem, and from that to figuring out what it is (and posting the message that initiated this thread) no more than a few minutes elapsed.

but unless you realize (guess, since the web interface didn't give any hints) there's a problem, why would you go through the exercise of logging out and checking your posts?  or investigate any other potential problem that might be there without your knowing about it, for that matter?