Mine's public ish, but I'm not always happy about people linking to my rants out of context because I tend to carry on thought processes from one post to the next, and arriving at one point in the arc generally doesn't provide newcomers with all the information. I don't lock it because I like new people to have a chance to find out what they're getting into, and I can't friend back everyone who friends me without my reading list becoming unmanageable.

I think the fact that people use their journals for different things causes a lot of problems with people who aren't *aware* that everyone use theirs for something different - one person's blog of carefully-considered essays is someone else's braindump and venting station, and apparently it's not always obvious which is which.