Anonymous Posting Section Discussions

[Paul_UK]

Information and rules moved to here http://emptyclosets.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5445

This thread is retained for general discussions about the anonymous posting section.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous posts will be shown like this one.

[CrimsonThunder]

Looks good. =]

I wonder if there'll be a 30 second waiting period between anonymous people.

[Paul_UK]

One other note. Because anonymous posts appear to be by a different user you will probably not be able to edit them after posting. So please take extra care to get it right by using the preview feature before finally posting.

If anyone is interested, I'm using this vBulletin addon http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=129108

[Paul_UK]

I wonder if there'll be a 30 second waiting period between anonymous people.

Yes it is, so I have reduced the time interval to 10 seconds.

[Paul_UK]

By the way, this section is for health and well-being stuff as well (maybe that's not clear from the title).

Also, because you are not posting as yourself there is no indication of your age, gender, orientation or anything else. So you may need to give a bit more background information than you would if posting normally.

[Anonymous]

Cool feature! Might come in handy! Does the signature show up though?

[Anonymous]

Nope - it doesn't.

[Gamer am I]

Cool feature! Might come in handy! Does the signature show up though?

You'd be able to recognize someone by their signature.

[joeyconnick]

It is exceedingly important that you click the box to make your post anonymous. The first thing you should do when you click on the "reply" button is click that box right away. Otherwise you will be known!

If you do end up posting in your own name, delete it straight away (hopefully before anyone sees it) then post again. You can't edit your post to make it anonymous.Just said this elsewhere but thought I'd repeat it: because of the requirement that users have to explicitly click the "Make Post Anonymously" box to actually use anonymity, I think this feature is really broken. If the default could be set so that all posts are anonymised automatically, that would be fine because accidentally hiding who you are is not apt to cause any problems, whereas accidentally revealing who you are is apt to cause many.

So my vote, for what it's worth, is the removal of anonymised posting until the default state for a reply is anonymous (and the Quick Reply feature is turned off for anonymous threads... or at least also defaulted to anonymous).

[Kimi]

Well, I hope that everyone who comes here and post something would be careful enough to check the box so it will be anonymised. But there are still high chances that people forget to check the box.

So it will be better if you submit reply, there are one more page that ask you "If you want to your post to be anonymised?"
Well, not that I have problem with the current system:)

[Anonymous]

Its happened to me a few times - luckily i managed to delete my post before anyone saw though.

[Anonymous]

What we cant use the Quicky Reply I love Using the Quick reply Bummer:tantrum:

[Grof142007]

oo did you guys know all Anonymous post have one Post Count I find that really cool

[Anonymous]

Just said this elsewhere but thought I'd repeat it: because of the requirement that users have to explicitly click the "Make Post Anonymously" box to actually use anonymity, I think this feature is really broken. If the default could be set so that all posts are anonymised automatically, that would be fine because accidentally hiding who you are is not apt to cause any problems, whereas accidentally revealing who you are is apt to cause many.

So my vote, for what it's worth, is the removal of anonymised posting until the default state for a reply is anonymous (and the Quick Reply feature is turned off for anonymous threads... or at least also defaulted to anonymous).

The Anonymous tickbox is now checked by default.

This doesn't affect Quick Reply though - that will still appear as you. I will try to find a way around that (perhaps disabling quick reply in that section if I can work out how to code that).

Paul

[Anonymous]

oo did you guys know all Anonymous post have one Post Count I find that really cool

The way it works is that "Anonymous" is a member, the same as everyone else. When you post anonymously it posts as that user and not as you. So Anonymous has his/her own post count, own signature, own avatar and own profile etc. I have left the profile details empty as far as possible and not added a signature. The date of birth is hidden, PMs are disabled, etc. This is also why you can't edit anonymous posts - it would be like editing someone else's posts.

The system records the post number and your username when you post anonymously, and stores it for access through the moderator system. It also records the posting IP address, as it does for every post made on the site. So we can track down who posted things if we needed to, but this would only be if there were problems.

Paul

[Paul_UK]

The Anonymous tickbox is now checked by default.

This doesn't affect Quick Reply though - that will still appear as you. I will try to find a way around that (perhaps disabling quick reply in that section if I can work out how to code that).

Paul

Quick Reply is now disabled in this section, so you have to use the full reply here. So now you have to deliberately choose NOT to be anonymous here. :thumbsup:

Thanks for your comments everyone. :thumbsup:

I have edited the first post in this thread to match how things work now. I have also tidied up this thread, removing the test posts and stuff that is no longer relevant etc.

[Anonymous]

Oohh much better now =] good job paul

[joeyconnick]

Its happened to me a few times - luckily i managed to delete my post before anyone saw though.However, if people are subscribed to the thread, I suspect they could still get a notification of your post with your identity attached.

[joeyconnick]

The Anonymous tickbox is now checked by default.

This doesn't affect Quick Reply though - that will still appear as you. I will try to find a way around that (perhaps disabling quick reply in that section if I can work out how to code that).

Paul

Quick Reply is now disabled in this section, so you have to use the full reply here. So now you have to deliberately choose NOT to be anonymous here. :thumbsup:

Thanks for your comments everyone. :thumbsup:

I have edited the first post in this thread to match how things work now. I have also tidied up this thread, removing the test posts and stuff that is no longer relevant etc.Cool... thanks! I'm pretty sure anonymous posting will work a lot better now.

[Paul_UK]

Who's Online (http://www.emptyclosets.com/forum/online.php) now doesn't show which thread etc you are viewing or replying to when you are in this section.

It also shows "Chatroom" instead of "unknown location" when you're in the chatroom.

[Anonymous]

Paul can you please make it so if you are in the Anonymous section that you do not appear on the online section at all, its scary to see your own name with "Replying to thread" and its so obvious that you're the one replying in the anonymous section.

[Paul_UK]

That's difficult with the way it is coded. There is no easy way of making the person not show at all - it lists all members that are logged in and the only thing I can do much about is what they are doing. If I removed what they are doing completely if in this section, the blank would still be a bit of a give-away. If people disappear for a few minutes then reappear again it could be concluded that they were here.

All I could really do to hide things is to remove what thread/section/whatever they are in regardless of whether they are in this section or not. So it would just give the info in black and not the detail (link) in blue. That could have other privacy advantages as it really is nobody else's business who you are sending a PM to either.

What do people think?

[Anonymous]

All I could really do to hide things is to remove what thread/section/whatever they are in regardless of whether they are in this section or not. So it would just give the info in black and not the detail (link) in blue. That could have other privacy advantages as it really is nobody else's business who you are sending a PM to either.

What do people think?It lists who you are sending a PM to? If that IS the case, that's an unreal invasion of privacy. Where is this? The only thing I found was something that listed that you were sending PMs, not who you were sending them to.

Anyway, yeah... if it actually says WHO you are sending PMs to, turn that off!

[Paul_UK]

Have a look now (http://emptyclosets.com/forum/online.php)....

It now doesn't show the thread/section/username/whatever each member is dealing with, just that they are "viewing thread", "reading private message" or whatever. So more private, while still showing who is here and whether they are in the forum, PMing or chatroom. There seems to be a couple of conditions that cause it to be blank, which I'll try to tidy up some other time.

[joeyconnick]

Have a look now (http://emptyclosets.com/forum/online.php)....

It now doesn't show the thread/section/username/whatever each member is dealing with, just that they are "viewing thread", "reading private message" or whatever. So more private, while still showing who is here and whether they are in the forum, PMing or chatroom. There seems to be a couple of conditions that cause it to be blank, which I'll try to tidy up some other time.I don't really mind if someone knows what thread I'm looking at or posting in (with the exception of it showing which anonymous thread I'm posting in, obviously) but it seems like if it gave details on who you were reading private messages from or sending them to, that would be way too much info and pretty much take the "private" out of "private messaging."

But it looks okay now. Although it seems to me that those Yahoo! Slurp Spiders should not be "let into" actual threads? I kinda remember from far back that you guys were only going to let search engines down to the level of listing thread topics, not into the threads themselves. Am I remembering correctly? Is the Yahoo! Slurp Spider just ignoring common searchbot protocol?

[Anonymous]

Spiders are allowed to read threads. They have the same rights as those who are not logged in. If they didn't read threads they wouldn't have much to populate search engines with. Having the threads spidered and in search engines is good for allowing people to find the site and hopefully relevant threads from the search engines. Allowing guests

They can't access user profiles and blogs etc though, nor can they "view" attachments.

If you log out then click around the site you'll see the level of access that search engines get.

Paul

[Anonymous]

damn web spiders lol j/k

[Paul_UK]

This section is currently being tested and will only remain if it works and is not abused. There are some risks with allowing anonymous posting (even though it is limited to members) but we hope the benefits will outweigh any problems.

ADMINS AND MODS CAN FIND OUT WHO ACTUALLY MADE ANONYMOUS POSTS. We obviously won't do so unless there is a problem, but we will take action if your post is inappropriate, in exactly the same way as if your name was shown.

DO NOT hide behind being anonymous to make comments about people that you would not make if your name was shown. NO INSULTS AND NO PERSONAL ATTACKS.

DO NOT try to identify who anonymous posters are. Even if you think you know from the posting style, do not post names or guesses.

I need to remind everyone of the rules of this section, which are repeated above. We WILL take action against anyone violating any of these rules, and indeed are likely to take STRONGER action due to the nature of the section.

[Paul_UK]

I have moved the rules to a new closed sticky thread here (http://emptyclosets.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5445).

This thread may be used for comments and discussions about this section.

[Paul_UK]

Please don't send PMs to Anonymous. They will NOT get to the person who posted as Anonymous.

I just checked his PM statistics and he had three in his inbox. I couldn't see who they were from or what they were about, and have just deleted them.

He is actually set not to receive PMs so I don't really understand how he got them.

[Anonymous]

DUN DUN DUN !!!! Im anonomys =]]:icon_bigg :icon_bigg :eusa_clap (*hug*) :icon_redf :confused: :kiss: