anonymous posting

[mys_ebrel]

Title
anonymous posting

Short, concise description of the idea
I think the owner of a journal/entry should be able to mark all comments for that specific entry "anonymous".

Full description of the idea
I think we should be able to automatically make all comments to a specific entry "anonymous".
An ordered list of benefits

• It gives the original poster

Comments

[azurelunatic]

Playing devil's advocate here (I don't really have any strong feelings about this one way or the other) a journal owner can say that they're only accepting anonymous comments, and, since it's their journal, delete or screen any comments made by someone under their own username.

[azurelunatic]

And thinking about it again, the fact that I was posting anonymous might not occur to me until after I'd posted, given that sometimes I just scream through a comment with my fingers on autopilot, not paying much attention to my surroundings since I know everything that's there. No matter how much there is flashing, I might not notice that I was anonymous until it was too late

[azurelunatic]

Or perhaps expand the Quick Reply interface to allow the choice easily. From the regular reply interface, it's one click to become anonymous. From the Quick Reply interface, one has to either open the Reply link in a new window/tab (getting the regular interface), or click the More Options button and then pick Anonymous, both of which are annoying extra steps.

[pbristow]

Um... [SCRATCHES HEAD] It's the absence of rarely used features that *makes* it quick reply! =:o} The point is that the user doesn't have to wade through stuff they probably don't need. If they find they do need one of those features, then the "normal" reply method is available to provide them.

[februaryfour]

+1

[pbristow]

The problem being that sometimes they're concentrating on typing their comment, and *forget* they need to click "annon, plz" button until *just after* they've told the whole world their dirty secrets.

So for that reason, I'm in favour of this feature being added *provided* that when the commenter clicks submit, they get taken to a warning/reminder that what they're submitting will be anonymous because the journal owner is enforcing it... Do they still want to go ahead?

General principle: Any new and unusual case (e.g. forced anonymity on comments) should be flagged up to the user before any harm is done, and should be implemented in a way that doesn't disrupt the behaviour in the normal case (i.e. "your userid is attached unless you ask for anonymity".)

[februaryfour]

+1

[turlough]

This, exactly.

[tiferet]

for one thing, if you've commented anon, isn't the only person who can delete it the owner of the journal?

[pauamma]

I'm against letting entry posters (or community maintainers, or whoever) force commenters to comment anonymously. I'm not opposed to hiding the commenter name from others, though. (I'm not sure what problem this suggestion is trying to solve, so I can't say whether that's the right solution, or even a problem that needs being addressed.)