They're just public pools with limited editability...

Private pools? Are you talking about sets?

Peekaboo said:
Private pools? Are you talking about sets?

No, some pools don't give you the option to change their order. I just PM'd a guy to change the order in his pool because I apparently don't have access to do so. https://e621.net/pool/show/4653

EDIT: notice the "order" option is missing, but is visible in most other pools.

Huh? That's odd. The pool was created by SuperSalad, a normal Member, so that leaves out the option that it might have been locked somehow by a >Contributor user.

Peekaboo said:
Huh? That's odd. The pool was created by SuperSalad, a normal Member, so that leaves out the option that it might have been locked somehow by a >Contributor user.

not really that odd for me, ive been able to lock pools I make too. and I think others and im a member lvl right now.
or at least it was the case last time I needed to lock something to prevent it from growing while I cleaned it up (last time it was a "personal fetish pool" a noob made 243 posts and kept going up until I locked it)

The whole time I've been with the site (both as a member and then as privileged) it's been possible to make a pool "private" but I've never understood the purpose. I've also never done it because it seems like it would cause problems.

It always felt like a leftover from when Sets didn't exist and no one was sure what a Pool was supposed to be used for and they sometimes did double-duty (there were a few that were basically private collections on a theme, but now that's what sets are for now.). Because pools aren't supposed to be for private use anymore, it seems like the ability to make a pool "private" (and restrict anyone else's ability to edit or amend things in it) should be removed as an option. I think it's just a leftover from how things used to be. But that's just my guess. Maybe it serves a purpose I'm not aware of though?

Private pools are useless, especially now that sets are a thing. At some point in the future I'm going to remove private pool functionality entirely.