When will XenForo integrate anonymous posting like Invision Community has?

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SalesQuery3234

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I have mixed thoughts on Invision Community vs XenForo, but I lean towards XenForo. Invision recently added an anonymous posting feature, allowing permitted user groups, in permitted boards, to post anonymously by clicking a toggle under the post body. This posts with "Anonymous" as the username, with a silhouette as an avatar, but still allows permitted user groups like moderators to show the account behind the post. This is a native function.

This would be very powerful in many communities where people may not post. There may be various reasons for this, but one would be that a topic is uncomfortable to post about, or they worry that something might come back to them for their post.

From my research, the only way to get this with XenForo is with plugins. I'm not willing to use a plugin for this, for many reasons, but my main reason is that if the plugin is no longer developed, it could break with an update, and there's the potential for the real usernames to become exposed.

I am correct that this functionality doesn't exist without plugins, right? If so, is XenForo considering adding similar functionality natively? If not, you really should, it would make your product more competitive. Thanks.
 
No, you may want to be part of a community (not anonymously) but have an anonymous question on such a website. Heck, if posting suggestions here on XF was anonymous I wouldn't even mind it. That way every vote would be unbiased instead of introducing any chance of bias if you perhaps do not like a member but like the suggestion. There's needs for some. Maybe not me, but who knows? I could probably find a use. Contests, etc.
 
Heck, if posting suggestions here on XF was anonymous I wouldn't even mind it. That way every vote would be unbiased instead of introducing any chance of bias if you perhaps do not like a member but like the suggestion.
Good point and maybe it happens, but that would be very pointless if you wanted a feature, kind of shooting your self in the foot. The point of voting being to ideally get what you want.
 
Remember, upvotes and downvotes are already anonymous. So the idea of an entire post being anonymous is not an outside the box idea. It's just expanding upon an action. Not sure why it is met with such opposition when XF has not even shown an inkling of consideration, lol.
 
Remember, upvotes and downvotes are already anonymous.
Indeed they are, Not to mention polls, which have it as optional. I think it would be good if upvotes/downvotes also had the option to be anonymous or unanonymous.

I do understand your point about this, however I don't see the idea of voting against something you actually want as analogous to the potential for the unpleasantness that could be caused by certain members using anonymous posting to disrupt or cause trouble.

Granted, you might counter that with saying that trolling should be moderated.
Not sure why it is met with such opposition when XF has not even shown an inkling of consideration, lol.
I never know what XF is thinking. They already post anonymously, isn't member @XenForo an anonymous posting account?
 
I agree with you that it would be nice to have an option of knowing who voted in a post. I feel like admins should have control over anonymity no matter where it is. So agreed.
 
They already post anonymously, isn't member @XenForo an anonymous posting account?
I have a WC2Mods account so moderator announcements can be posted as being from the team rather than a specific moderator. That's anonymous posting but not in the same way as we are discussing. Someone actually has to switch accounts to do that. I am guessing that the Xenforo account is similar since it is used for things like the new release announcements.

What we are discussing is a member posting under their regular account but being able to hide who posted it. And I did upvote the original suggestion, BTW, though I added some comments as well.
 
If you have two email addresses and set up two accounts for yourself on a forum, one can be under your real name and one not. With the ever-increasing use of techniques that mask real IP's, I already find it almost impossible to know much about a user who chooses not to share much about themselves.

It's also worth noting that, besides things like mental health issues, there are - and have been for a long time - people who for reasons of their profession must be anonymous in their online activity.

-S-
 
I don't think a foolproof way to detect them exists any more.

-S-
Depends how smart the person socking is. If I was going to sock, I'd switch to another Internet connection that I had not used with that site before (or even use a proxy), use a burner email on one of the free sites, etc. If I put my brain to it, I could make it pretty hard to detect. But not everyone is that savvy, even today. I still catch socks just on matching IPs so clearly they did not put that kind of thought into it.
 
The amount of people that do that on THESE forums is worth noting. Its nearly impossible to stop.

Anonymous posting has to be done perfectly or its a huge security concern if you have your users rely on it. If you really want anonymous, just have people logout and do an area with guest posting or something, no?
 
I have mixed thoughts on Invision Community vs XenForo, but I lean towards XenForo. Invision recently added an anonymous posting feature, allowing permitted user groups, in permitted boards, to post anonymously by clicking a toggle under the post body. This posts with "Anonymous" as the username, with a silhouette as an avatar, but still allows permitted user groups like moderators to show the account behind the post. This is a native function.

This would be very powerful in many communities where people may not post. There may be various reasons for this, but one would be that a topic is uncomfortable to post about, or they worry that something might come back to them for their post.

From my research, the only way to get this with XenForo is with plugins. I'm not willing to use a plugin for this, for many reasons, but my main reason is that if the plugin is no longer developed, it could break with an update, and there's the potential for the real usernames to become exposed.

I am correct that this functionality doesn't exist without plugins, right? If so, is XenForo considering adding similar functionality natively? If not, you really should, it would make your product more competitive. Thanks.
It sounds like a decent feature, but it doesn't look like it's going to be implemented unfortunately.

Note that Invision doesn't show post numbers though. This is something that annoys me greatly, to the point of not using it even though I have an active license. Your preference may vary, but you should be aware of this.
 
I am trying to reply to everyone's points, but my reply hits a moderation queue which it is never approved from. This is the third time. What a joke of a forum team. Then again I don't know anywhere else where you use a forum for sales questions. Useless.

Clearly Invision Community will be my choice, as they have the anonymous posting feature, which for my community, I would like to have in some boards, without relying on a third party plugin.
That sucks. Perhaps try writing out people's names without the actual tag. We'll still get an alert like I got one for this post. 🙂

I know what you mean about critical features and support. If you'd like to to join my forum, we can talk privately about this.
 
Meh I can't be bothered editing it to try and fight the stupid filtering system again. I've lost faith in making a purchase anyway. Thank you to everyone for your replies, allowing me to see that XenForo isn't the platform for me.

In the unlikely event I do try XenForo for a project that doesn't need anonymous posting features, thankfully there are plenty of nulled copies out there that I can use, specifically in spite of the awful forum team here :) 🖕
 
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