View your own profile as either a "friend" or "stranger" to test your privacy settings.

[Bank Lockless]

I would like to see what my profile looks like to other users depending on whether or not they are a friend or not.

[my new friend]

As a non-friend use a browser while logged out of Steam.
As a friend, use an alt account or ask a friend.

[Aachen]

What sort of test is needed?

[MoonC A T]

This would confuse many Steam members and post #1 is an easy, fast solution.

I can picture it now:
Help, my profile is messed up
Oh nvm, I'm in friend view mode

[Bank Lockless]

Originally posted by my new friend:

As a non-friend use a browser while logged out of Steam.
As a friend, use an alt account or ask a friend.

Use an alt account? That's too much work for most users here.

Originally posted by MoonC A T:

This would confuse many Steam members and post #1 is an easy, fast solution.

I can picture it now:
Help, my profile is messed up
Oh nvm, I'm in friend view mode

Yea, they should make such a button concealed in a drop down menu to minimize chances of misclicking it.

[Yzal]

?
copy your profile url and paste it in your browser.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by Lazy Dog:

?
copy your profile url and paste it in your browser.

Only works if you don't maintain a Steam login in your browser, which you should anyway for unrelated convenience and security reasons.

If you do, however, you can open up a different browser, or use incognito/private/etc. mode (which is a feature available in many recent browsers) to pretend you're not logged in.

[Bank Lockless]

This is just a convenience thing. It's unnecessary to suggest these work around methods because I already use them. This thread is mainly directed at the Steam devs.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by KFC Bankrupt:

This is just a convenience thing. It's unnecessary to suggest these work around methods because I already use them. This thread is mainly directed at the Steam devs.

Ah, fair point.

[C²C^Guyver |NZB|]

Originally posted by KFC Bankrupt:

This is just a convenience thing. It's unnecessary to suggest these work around methods because I already use them. This thread is mainly directed at the Steam devs.

Valve employees rarely post on these forums. The entire community forums are user-based and are not a point of contact for Valve themselves

[Bank Lockless]

Originally posted by C²C^Guyver |NZB|:

Originally posted by KFC Bankrupt:

This is just a convenience thing. It's unnecessary to suggest these work around methods because I already use them. This thread is mainly directed at the Steam devs.

Valve employees rarely post on these forums. The entire community forums are user-based and are not a point of contact for Valve themselves

Actually, one of my suggestions on this board actually did get implemented.
I asked that when you get a friend request and check the person's profile, the profile didn't had any option to friend them or ignore them, you had to go back to the list of friend requests in order to make the decision. I simply asked for them add those buttons on to the person's profile you that you didn't had to go back to that page. Again, a very minor convenience thing, but it did get implemented.

[Mad Scientist]

Originally posted by KFC Bankrupt:

Originally posted by C²C^Guyver |NZB|:

Valve employees rarely post on these forums. The entire community forums are user-based and are not a point of contact for Valve themselves

Actually, one of my suggestions on this board actually did get implemented.
I asked that when you get a friend request and check the person's profile, the profile didn't had any option to friend them or ignore them, you had to go back to the list of friend requests in order to make the decision. I simply asked for them add those buttons on to the person's profile you that you didn't had to go back to that page. Again, a very minor convenience thing, but it did get implemented.

The mistake here is assuming what a user was suggested was implemented because it was suggested. Often things are planned or thought out by Valve, regardless of what the users post here. "In Valve Time" is also a common phrase of how long it takes before Valve may simply introduce something they already thought of, or to otherwise implement/roll out etc.

It's unlikely they implemented if because of your suggestion. They wouldn't tell a user anyway because that would result in users bothering them, constantly.

[[N]ebsun]

Originally posted by C²C^Guyver |NZB|:

Originally posted by KFC Bankrupt:

This is just a convenience thing. It's unnecessary to suggest these work around methods because I already use them. This thread is mainly directed at the Steam devs.

Valve employees rarely post on these forums. The entire community forums are user-based and are not a point of contact for Valve themselves

They might rarely reply, but who knows how often they read - it would be pointless to have a forum for suggestions/ideas if they never bothered to read it or implement them (even if only 1 in 1000 ideas/suggestions was one they implement)

If they never implement or read any ideas posted here, they may as well delete the forum and all the posts

[Bank Lockless]

Originally posted by Mr. Gentlebot:

Originally posted by KFC Bankrupt:

Actually, one of my suggestions on this board actually did get implemented.
I asked that when you get a friend request and check the person's profile, the profile didn't had any option to friend them or ignore them, you had to go back to the list of friend requests in order to make the decision. I simply asked for them add those buttons on to the person's profile you that you didn't had to go back to that page. Again, a very minor convenience thing, but it did get implemented.

The mistake here is assuming what a user was suggested was implemented because it was suggested. Often things are planned or thought out by Valve, regardless of what the users post here. "In Valve Time" is also a common phrase of how long it takes before Valve may simply introduce something they already thought of, or to otherwise implement/roll out etc.

It's unlikely they implemented if because of your suggestion. They wouldn't tell a user anyway because that would result in users bothering them, constantly.

Believe what you will, but it was such a minor change, so I highly doubt that it was a coincidence that they just so happen to add it right after I suggested it.

[modest monet]

Sorry to necro an old thread, but this is an excellent idea and I couldn't find any more recent threads with this suggestion.

Viewing one's profile with various simulated permissions levels (stranger, friend) is an important tool for user privacy and safety. I understand the concerns shared above about how this might lead to confusion for some users, but this is a user flow that's implemented without confusion on several other platforms and I am confident Valve's engineering and design teams could implement a usable and confusion-free user flow for this feature should they decide to :)

[TheRealLemon]

I also want this