to answer your last point: In the next releases we've planned to add a summary preview, which appears (optionally ?) right before the user publish a post. Such preview should show how permissions are applied to all the users / circles involved, after having merged them together ( when multiple are selected ).
p.s. We're very aware that circles and boundaries needs a ton of work, to end up with a usable flow that empower the user toward such space of flexibility without overwhelming them, I expect lot of iterations and would be amazing to do several design sprints or anything that would involve community participation for such critical features - any feedback on this is more than welcome!
Bearing in mind that:
a) I'm not a developer; and
b) in these matters, I mostly don't know what I'm talking about...
If there is a question of whether or not to include certain functionalities in "circles and boundaries" might it not make sense to provide users with pre-configured "beginner" settings which anticipate the most likely use cases of new, non-technical users -- along with an "advanced" configuration option for people who understand in a finer-grained way what they want?
Whether such an arrangement succeeds or not will depend, of course, on how it is presented to the user (interface, vocabulary, documentation, prompts) as much as its inherent flexibility and usability.
