XF 2.3 Baked in REAL NAME support

[MapleOne]

With more and more social media sites requiring REAL NAME to participate I'm wondering if Xenforo will ever have a real person feature out of the box.

On many forums (including mine) there is a verification feature with a verification badge similar to X. I recently switched my X profile to....

Real Name + @handle and I love how X handles that. It allows for both real name and a desired handle.

As close as I have come to that is @handle as user name with Real Name displayed underneath or Real Name with User Handle displayed underneath.

Nothing really links the two so on can enter @realname or @userhandle and have it come up at the same time. In fact no real user name option really exists on Xenforo, I know I can set the fields myself, mandate them etc but forums with real users have way more credibility and users tend to behave much better and require less moderation.

I am considering removing the verified member portion on the forum unless someone actually has real person info in the profile.

It has to be done in such a way that once real info is entered it stays that way unless permission is asked to change it. Again I have that on my forum, the fields are editable only once and when verified status is given they are not changeable except by a mod.

I have allowed aliases to date and because we have a buy and sell section I am thinking about an ENHANCED verified REAL NAME system to build the utmost in trust. When you have monetary transactions it becomes important to build trust and just like I changed my user name on X to real name I was hoping eventually Xenforo would come out with a baked in solution for Verified Real Name.

 

[bzcomputers]

With more and more social media sites requiring REAL NAME to participate ...

I am not sure there are really that many out there currently, and I've not heard of many moving in that direction also. Dozens of people have the same name, a name alone is really not a good security or identification measure.

True ID and real name "verification" costs money. That's why most social platforms don't do it. Currently these prices can be steep including monthly or yearly charges, plus "per verification" charges that range from .25 cents up to well over $1.00 per verification. The ones that do verify have large incomes from their site already and can afford it.

Just imagine a post on your site goes viral and you wake up with a few thousand dollars of "verification" charges. Not really what a typically forum owner wants, especially since many of these sites are running for free and already costing their admins out of pocket.

Trust online has traditionally gained through feedback, in your case seller/buyer feedback and ratings. Most online sales platforms have this already built into them. eBay has been running like this for years without ID verification requirements.

Real name or fake name, users behind the keyboard will still post what they want without much worry for backlash. Just look at Facebook, most of these people are posting under their real name and I would say a good percentage of posts are of "questionable" taste to some.

 

[Itworx4me]

I use real names on one of my sites. I had a addon built that changes the username to a nickname when viewing the site as a guest. I verify each registration with either paypal or spokeo. Has work great for 20+ years.