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"Make this comment anonymous" function

spinsaroundspinsaround
edited February 2008 in Vanilla 1.0 Help
I'm not a coder, but does anyone else have any thoughts / needs for an extenstion to 'Make this comment anonymous"?

The goal is that in a discussion forum users can raise points about which they're embarassed / ashamed / have other reasons to keep it private. Think of it like a whistleblowing forum for example.

I suppose the simple answer would be to have them login as a guest, but this will not work since the forum needs to be closed to all but authenticated users, so whilst there will be an audit trail in the database, it is not evident to the normal user.

Comments

  • MinisweeperMinisweeper New
    Interesting idea again. Open for abuse but would be handy nontheless. And i guess admins would still know who posted it. It'd need some database work but it shouldnt be too tricky..
  • ToivoToivo New
    what about chat on the left panel? it could be anonymous
  • spinsaroundspinsaround
    good thinking - but it's not logged in the discussion / referenceable way that would be useful.
  • kdizzlekdizzle
    I'd be interested in an extension to allow this too.
  • maumaumaumau
    This is just what I need now. Did anyone manage to put something like this together?
  • FyorlFyorl
    Could be achieved by flagging a discussion as 'anonymous'. That way the UserID could be retained but when rendering it is simply replaced with 'Anonymous'.
  • timfiretimfire
    edited February 2008
    FyorlCould be achieved by flagging a discussion as 'anonymous'. That way the UserID could be retained but when rendering it is simply replaced with 'Anonymous'.
    That's a really good idea, if you wanted to retain authorship.

    I can see arguments both for and against retaining authorship, rather than pure anonymity. Retaining authorship means there's always the possibility that the admin could go into the database and see who posted what. That's good if you want to combat abuse.

    But I have participated in forums where people talk about rather sensitive stuff, in a respectable manner. I'm not sure if people would be so open if they knew the admin could look them up. But in those places, the admin has to be real careful about who they grant membership. If someone was writing a "pure anonymity" extension, it would be advisable to make the feature permissions-based, rather than grant it to everyone.

    [edit] I've been to one forum that recorded and displayed the IP address of anonymous posters. It was nice because it gave a sense of who was writing what, without giving away identity. It also made it obvious if the same person was posting lots of abusive stuff. It also meant admins could look up the author, if needed, but it be an individual process, rather than a simple database look-up. [/edit]
  • maumaumaumau
    How does one flgs discussion s 'anonyous'? (using 1.1.2 but don't see the option) Also..would it be possible for a user to enter arbitrary name instead of anonymous so that his ID still hits the database?
  • timfiretimfire
    maumauHow does one flgs discussion s 'anonyous'?

    You can't, it's being proposed for a potential extension.

    But that said, you could presently enable anonymous comments (not discussions) with the guest post extension. But that would mean anyone could post, not just members.
This discussion has been closed.