Anonymised posting to communities

[damned_colonial]

Title:
Anonymised posting to communities

Area:
communities

Summary:
Community admins should be able to set an option allowing people to post "anonymously" to communities. Under the hood, the site would track who really posted, but the appearance in the community itself, and on people's reading pages, would be as if it were anonymous.

Description:
Let me say, up-front, that this is *not* fully anonymous posting. You still need a DW account to do it: the poster's underlying identity is still known in the depths of the system, but is obfuscated when it's presented via the website.

So, here's how it could work...

Community admins would have the following options available to them in their community settings:

* no anonymised posting
* anonymised posting allowed
* anonymised posting only

The moderation options for communities (currently a simple checkbox) would be extended to:

* no moderation
* moderate anonymous posts
* moderate all posts

When posting to a community, if the community allows anonymised posting, there would be a checkbox saying:

[ ] post anonymously?

If anonymous posting is required (i.e. only anon posts are allowed), the box would be checked by default and greyed out, so it can't be changed.

Note that you must still have a DW account, and (generally) would need to be a member of a community to post to it. (A community admin can set the community to allow postings by non-members, but this is not the default.)

When the post is made (and, if necessary, approved by a moderator) it appears in the community. Instead of saying:

<user name="damned_colonial"> posting in <user name="some_community">

it would say:

Anonymous Person posting in <user name="some_community">

This would appear on the community's journal page, on people's reading pages, on the entry page, etc.

Email replies to an anonymised community post would be sent to the poster, as if sie had posted under hir ordinary username.

Here are some use cases where anonymised community posting might be useful:

1) a "post secret" type community, like <user name="fandom_secrets" site="livejournal.com"> on LJ; this anonymising feature would allow people to run these sorts of comms with less moderation overhead.

2) a "personal ads" community, where people could post anonymised personal ads, setting responses to screened and/or allowing anonymous replies, to achieve two-way privacy/anonymity.

3) an advice community, eg. for people to ask for sex tips or personal advice, without disclosing who they are.

4) any of a number of styles of community that currently have top level posts saying "here is a new top-level post for you to post anon comments on", where top-level comments are, effectively, posts; these might work better, in some cases, as communities where you can make anon top-level posts.

The biggest problem I foresee is how to let community admins remove posting access from problematic anon posters. The "members" part of the "manage communities" page is where you currently do this. However, it is based on the identities of community members. Ways I see of handling this include:

1) admins can see the real identities of anonymised posters, and use the "members" page as usual

2) admins can remove posting access from anonymised posters without directly seeing their identities; this would need new admin tools, and might still expose people's identities because if you have only removed posting access from one poster, and you look at that "members" page, it's going to be pretty clear who it was.

3) admins have no ability to remove posting access from anon posters; moderation and/or deletion after the fact are the only means available to them for managing anon posts.

Of these, option 3 appeals to me most.

Poll #3744 Anonymised posting to communities

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 66

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
36 (54.5%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
8 (12.1%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
7 (10.6%)

(I have no opinion)
12 (18.2%)

(Other: please comment)
3 (4.5%)