Allow “Name" field to be disabled in registration dialog

Feature
1

Continuing the discussion from Can't remove Real Name if Admin disables them:

(Apologies if this belongs in UX)

Feature request: Allow the Name field to be disabled on the signup dialog as a settings option.

As per the linked thread, this is to allow more anonymous use, for example when full names are already being hidden throughout the forum.

An alternative way may be, when the "enable names” setting is turned off, do not show the Name field in the signup dialog. (this avoids adding an extra setting).

Hopefully that makes sense…

This is kind of the opposite to Making the name field required or removing it?

2

Can’t you simply hide it with a CSS override? It is already optional.

2 Likes
3

Yes, I believe it could be solved in this way. The reason I suggest a change in behaviour is that it feels wrong that when you disable all uses of the full name it is still gathered. Hence I’m not sure if this is actually a UX thing.

4

Good point, which exact site settings should this be keyed off of?

5

I would suggest the “enable names” setting in the “Users” panel (at least in 1.2 it is).

6

On our instance we may not be allowed to collect email and name of people, the combination of which is considered Sensitive PII. Has there been a way to completely disable the name field at signup (and not even show it as an optional field)?

7

Emails - There have been topics about that recently and the bottom line is that email verification is a necessary part of Discourse. I suppose you could encourage use of a disposable email address, like from Guerrilla Mail.

Real Name - If there is no site option (I don’t know as I use real name) then you could use CSS in a theme component to hide that part of the sign up form.

1 Like
8

Clearly the email we cannot do without, if we can completely hide the name field so people don’t fill it in that will be enough.

I’m not familiar with the process of editing CSS for Discourse. Where is a good Discourse-related documentation that I could use?

9

See How to make CSS changes on your site

1 Like
10

This hides the name from the registration form for me:

.create-account-form .input-group:nth-of-type(3) {display: none;}