Allow anonymous posting for members - Unclassified NewsBoard

NFG

2007-09-27, 15:34 #1

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Subject: Allow anonymous posting for members

I would like to see an option for anonymous posting on a per-forum basis. I have a forum with a sex-talk section, and I'd like to offer the members the ability to post there without their name showing, if they so desire.

Ideally it would be by-forum, so that only certain forums would have the option. A simple checkbox during posting that would apply the post to the DB as a dummy user...

I was thinking to try and figure this out myself, but I think I might be too old to figure out how the forum was assembled. =)

Yves (Administrator) 2007-09-27, 15:38 #2

User title: UNB developer & webmaster
Member since Jan 2004 · 3814 posts · Location: Erlangen, Germany
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What name shall be displayed by those posts then? If none at all, discussions are impossible IMO.

♪ ...nanananah, all in all we’re just brilliant thieves, nanananah... ♪♬

NFG

2007-09-28, 00:54 #3

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I think ideally it would be context-sensitive, so that within a thread the anonymous user would be consistent.

For example, if Dave posts in the thread anonymously, he becomes Anon-1, when Julia posts she becomes Anon-2, but if dave replies anonymously he would show up as Anon-1 again. This would allow, though granted with a little difficulty for the reader, coherent posting clarity. It would also preserve anonymity across threads 'cause if dave posted third in another thread, he'd be Anon-3.

Doing it this way would obviously be more complicated than simply attributing a post to an 'anon' account, but it would be a valuable tool (and pretty unique, I've never seen it in other forums...)

As an admin I'd like to have the ability to uncover the IDs of the anonymous posters as well (I'm thinking of the old BBS days where I had that power).

Yves (Administrator) 2007-09-28, 15:47 #4

User title: UNB developer & webmaster
Member since Jan 2004 · 3814 posts · Location: Erlangen, Germany
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Okay, so I see two possible way to implement it.

1. Assign temporary user names when viewing a thread. The problem is that UNB only regards the posts on the current page when displaying a thread (which BTW is why reply references to previous pages don't feature the post-in-thread counter). So this would add more database queries (and BTW could also solve the other side-effect).

2. Assign temporary user names when posting in a thread. No effort is necessary when viewing the thread later. But the name needs to be stored in the database, so the layout must be extended for it. When the posting is added, the entire thread is checked for previous posts of this user and a temp name can then be re-used or created.

I'd prefer the second way, it sounds more efficient.

Also, when an anonymous posting is displayed, the user ID should not be visible. But this is only little work. For admins, the user ID should be visible again.

What do others think who are familiar with the UNB architecture? Is it possible to do that as a plugin? (FYI: Plugins can add database columns or entrie tables in their initialisation code.) What are the impacts on templates? I can revisit this topic more detailled in one or two weeks, after my last test at university.

♪ ...nanananah, all in all we’re just brilliant thieves, nanananah... ♪♬

sureideas 2009-04-07, 19:29 #5

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In reply to post #1

You like to allow anonymous posting from people. Well your intentions are right and it is possible. I have gone through the suggestions made by admin to achieve your goal..
My question is do you really need that? Allowing people to make anonymous posting would make your forum a place for spam..

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NFG

2009-04-08, 02:05 #6

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Anonymous posts still have to come from registered members, it's not an option for guests. If my registered members are spamming me, I can easily find them and kill them.