Hi @dereklputnam,
Thank you for this great component! It’s a fantastic foundation for managing user privacy on Discourse.
I’ve developed a specialized bidirectional (reciprocal) visibility fork based on your work. In our professional community, we needed a “Mutual Trust” model where verified members can see each other’s real names/business data, but remain completely anonymous to the general public or unverified users.
Key features of this fork:
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Reciprocal Logic: A field is revealed only if both the viewer and the profile owner belong to the authorized group.
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Staff Oversight: Admins and moderators retain full visibility for safety and moderation purposes.
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Self-Visibility: Users can always see their own hidden fields, even if they are not yet part of the authorized group, so they can manage their own profile.
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Peer-to-Peer Privacy: It ensures that even verified users don’t reveal their identity to someone who hasn’t undergone the same level of verification.
Roadmap: In future updates, I plan to add granular group settings to define exactly which groups can see and be seen (e.g., allowing Group A to see Group B, but not vice versa).
I’m currently polishing the documentation and plan to publish this as a standalone “Advanced Privacy” variant in a separate topic once I gain full access to the Theme Components category.
In the meantime, if anyone needs this bidirectional logic, you can check it out here: GitHub: https://github.com/AirVetra/discourse-hidden-user-fields-bidirectional
Thanks again for the inspiration!