Sometimes there are reasons where you’d want to post anonymously. Generally this is frowned upon, and in most cases it is prohibited in the rules without explicit permission.
To allow this to happen in an easily manageable way, Discourse has a feature that we are going to enable that allows users to post under a second anonymous account. In order to do this you must request access to this user group by sending a DM to the @moderators group.
Once you are in this AnonymousUsers group, you can enter and exit your assigned anonymous account for 7 days. After 7 days the account is no longer usable. Any abuse of this feature will result in a permanent ban of your main account.
Once approved, you can enter/exit anonymous mode via the profile menu up top:
Please note, the anonymous account created is tied to your main user account but that association is only available to site admins via database query. The @moderator group will also know the list of approved users able to post anonymously. So keep both of those points in mind.
This is a trial run of the feature, if we find it is not working out as intended, we may disable it.
Automatically include non-customizable user title to inform other community users of them being an approved account, possibly also with a link to this thread for more info
damn I really could have used this a couple weeks ago when i wanted to ask something about champs before people were supposed to know i was actually going…
edit: I was supposed to join another team who qualified after my team didn’t, and my mentors didn’t want my entire team to bother the other team asking if they could join as well, since they only wanted specific people to join, so they wanted me to lay low for a couple of days
2ed this - it would be nice to know as a forum-goer that an anonymous post is sanctioned via this method vs. a rogue user creating an anonymous account that should be reported.
I’ve never done anonymous posting before (hell I barely even post on this account lol) but doesn’t it still defeat the purpose of Anonymous mode if the account is still connected to the main account that admin can still see?
Only if you feel the need to be anonymous from the moderators. While those edge cases will exist. The very vast majority of anonymous accounts are worried about retribution from people on their teams/in real life and most of the time that isn’t going to be the moderators. So while there are times when this isn’t enough it usually will be and having an official method also shows that those anonymous accounts are specifically sanctioned and as a community we don’t have to figure out if it’s an allowed anonymous account or not.
True anonymity is not going to happen (and I would argue it shouldn’t). At some level you need to be able to police abuse of the feature so people don’t go around just lobbing dumpster fires and walking away just to observe the chaos.
As others have mentioned the primary use-case is not for anonymity from the forum moderators but rather the community. Personally I think for integrity purposes we all should be posting with our names attached and I would not post anonymously, but I can understand that some are not as comfortable with standing up for their words for various reasons or may not be ready to do that just yet but can still contribute to the discourse while they build that courage.
For some people it’s also important that they be able to get guidance/bring up issues without their name attached for their own personal safety. I’m not, but if I was on a team with an abusive mentor and needed help, CD would be a good place to go to get information on the resources available to me and how to find another team if I wanted to, but depending on the situation, it could be highly risky for me to post anything with my name where that mentor could see it and retaliate against me.
I just hope we can get a indicator as a forum user that a given anonymous post is using the proper channels so that we don’t have to flag legitimate posts to capture those also violating the community guidelines creating duplicate or anonymous accounts.
Anonymous accounts will just be labeled anonymous# (anonymous10) for example. This is an example of a post from an approved account from today
Anonymous account do still need to follow other rules on CD as Brandon specified “Any abuse of this feature will result in a permanent ban of your main account.”
I have no issue with anonymous posting. Even creating new account for anonymous posting. The CD community can be hostile to unpopular opinions, and “dead horse” topics. I’ve had to turn off my DMs entirely because I have some unpopular opinions on CD. I totally understand why people do it. But I’m not going to allow anyone into bullying me into anonymity.
As an aside, students, please please please do not ever put your full name on a public profile on the Internet, especially not one where someone could easily determine which school you go to. We’re lucky no one on CD has upset the wrong people yet and caused it to be a tool in a harassment campaign.
