Allow communities to restrict viewing of their membership to members

[zvi]

Title:
Allow communities to restrict viewing of their membership to members

Area:
profile

Summary:
Currently, while a community admin can choose to hide a communities' subscribers from its profile page, there is no way to hide its membership. This should be changed.

Description:
Knowing the membership of an organization may well reveal something about the organization's purpose. If, for instance, all my friends join a comm without telling me about it in December, I can infer that a lot of fic and icons will be posted for me January 8 (my birthday.) Communities may wish to restrict publicly listing their membership for reasons both more and less benign, but it's not really any outsider's business.

There's no requirement that a community describe itself or its purpose on its profile page, except in this matter of its membership. For those who want to create secret societies, I think DW should give them a better tool to do so.

Poll #2457 Allow communities to restrict viewing of their membership to members

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 71

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
58 (81.7%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
7 (9.9%)

(I have no opinion)
6 (8.5%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[denise]

Though I don't often give rejection reasons, since this particular suggestion was so well-received I thought i would: I'm rejecting this because we're fundamentally against "security through obscurity", and since a directory search will reveal comm membership (and can't be blocked, and IMO this shouldn't change), this would qualify. It would give people a false sense of security.