In a discussion titled “Is anonymous posting by category possible?” under the Feature category, lucywarburton asks if it’s possible to restrict anonymous posting to specific categories—particularly for an “Ask an Expert” feature involving sensitive legal questions. Initially, awesomerobot says it’s not possible, but then revises their answer in post 3, explaining that when anonymous posting is enabled, users are assigned a fake email with an anon-prefixed domain (e.g., anon.community.example.com). This domain can be used to automatically assign anonymous users to a group, and permissions can then be set so only that group can access or post in a designated category. TheBestPessimist suggests this method should be documented in howto, referencing a related guide. lucywarburton thanks the contributors. kiefferr notes a limitation: unless manually adjusted, anonymous posting remains enabled in all other categories, requiring individual permission edits to restrict it elsewhere. While workable, this adds administrative overhead.
I am new to Discourse and trying to understand the details and extent of anonymous posting functionality.
Is it possible to restrict posts to anonymous by category? We are looking to implement an “Ask an Expert” feature whereby users can ask licensed attorneys legal questions. Due to the sensitive nature of some of these questions we would like for all of these posts / questions to remain anonymous. We would like for any user (independent of trust level) asking these types of “ask an expert” questions to show up as anonymous (either by default or altogether). Can someone please point me in the right direction? Thanks!
Actually, I spoke too soon. I realized there is a way while answering another question.
When anonymous posting mode is enabled, a new anonymous user is created. This user automatically gets an account with a fake email address. The email address domain has anon prepended.
For example anon.community.example.com
You can use this domain to automatically assign anonymous users to a group (this is an option when creating a new group).
So you could create a new category and edit the permissions so that only that group of anonymous users can see/reply in it.
It seems like a shortcoming here though is that anonymous posting will still be permissible for all other categories unless you go thru each one individually and disable the newly created anonymous group from posting. Maybe not a big deal.