Question Enabling "anonymous" posts in a Kunena discussion

Thanks for your ideas. The latter idea could be difficult to manage but might be very workable in certain cases. I am having a problem getting the "allow name change" to work. I've got the settings as you've indicated and they don't work for regular users. An Admin posting a new thread can change his user name. And the thread is posted with the fake user name. HOWEVER, when you click on the link of the fake user name, it displays the real user profile I did this from a regular user account.

I'm in California. If you have other ideas on how to make this work for normal users (or an idea on what I may be doing wrong), let me know. I will resume work on this tomorrow. FYI, it's easy to encourage our users not to us an avatar.

kross76 wrote:

... when you click on the link of the fake user name, it displays the real user profile.

Oh, right. Yes, of course. I forgot about that! :blush: Touché! I guess it's back to the old drawing board.

I had another idea. You could have two websites: one in which people were authoritative and the other in which they didn't have to be. :silly:

Like I said before, I don't know what your site goals are, or what purposes the forum serves. Perhaps, though, the kinds of discussions you are intending to have were not meant to be conducted using in an open arena? The simplest solution might be to say, "If you have something to say, then say it. If you're worried about treading on someone else's sensitive toes, write a letter to the Personal Advice column". I dunno. :lol:

"Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land. Different forms and styles in art should develop freely and contend freely. We think that it is harmful to the growth of art and science if administrative measures are used to impose one particular style of art or school of thought and to ban another. Questions of right and wrong in the arts and sciences should be settled through free discussion in artistic and scientific circles and through practical work in these fields. They should not be settled in summary fashion." - Mao Zedong, On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People, 1957

Appreciate your help. I suspect what we'll do is set up a special email account, and anyone that wants to post a question anonymously can email to us; we'll post as a special user, and that individual can subscribe to the discussion thread (if there is one). Typically, these posts are questions; and it's more important for the responders to NOT be anonymous so their answers have credibility.

Thanks again for your help. I'm sure I'll have more questions.

Thank you for an entertaining and thought-provoking discussion.

I gave this matter a bit more thought overnight and I've come to the conclusion that, if you want to run a kind of anonymous "advice column" for executives, your advice-givers would need pseudonym accounts. For those times when your members are making personally-endorsed statements, they would use a different account. This would be the only certain way to eliminate the ability that users have, by clicking the profile link in the forum, of discovering the alter-ego identities.

It's a tough juggling act, but I'm sure that high profile executives can juggle these minor things. Good luck.

Perhaps a Kunena feature request?

Two new backend parameters. Checkbox to allow members to post anonymously and input field for anonymous userid. If checked, "Post Message" frontend page has check box to post anonymously. If user checks this when posting, his account ID is replaced by the id set by the admin for the anonymous user when page is posted.

I'm wondering if it would be just this easy.

Future considerations for this feature

1) Can not post anonymously to non-anonymous thread
2) Associate anon post with real user so mods can see

What's this? The Kunea Nazi patrol? What business is it of yours why someone needs anonymity on their forum? The poor guy is just looking for some technical help and not a sermon from some ANONYMOUS person.

What's really great is you couldn't even answer the question!

In the future, if you actually have any knowledge, share it. And while you're doing it, please keep your opinion to yourself.

DugleyDoright wrote: What's this? The Kunea Nazi patrol? What business is it of yours why someone needs anonymity on their forum? The poor guy is just looking for some technical help and not a sermon from some ANONYMOUS person.

What's really great is you couldn't even answer the question!

In the future, if you actually have any knowledge, share it. And while you're doing it, please keep your opinion to yourself.

Who are you talking to in this 2 year old thread? Did you share knowledge or just your opinion?

At the time when this discussion started (two years ago) there was no truly anonymous posting feature and, consequently, there was no technical solution available. It was against this background that I responded to this topic to try to offer alternative non-technical ways of working around the problem.

Following this discussion, the development team built a way to allow anonymous posting.

This is a good example to demonstrate to new users how feedback from the community has actually driven product development.

However, the topic is old, the situation has changed and, no, there \are no Kunena "Nazis" who go about trampling the rights of people to ask perfectly valid questions. As long as we all understand that everyone is entitled to having an opinion based on information available to them at the time - and being able to admit later that they may have been mistaken in their judgement - that's OK. I think we're done with this topic and it should be consigned to the archives.