What do you guys think of giving users the option to hide their username/avatar from the top toolbar.
For privacy reasons you might not want that visible all the time.
Would you mind giving examples of such reasons?
Say you are at a coffee shop and you don’t want people to glance over at your screen and be able to find you online.
??? Seriously? That’s the rationale behind it? Don’t get on in public places if you don’t want it seen. I can’t see a good reason for this feature to exist. You can always just logout and thus none of your info would appear. Just hiding it from the top is meaningless. As when you post a new topic or reply, your avatar will appear then.
You could always use a custom stylesheet within your browser to hide your top bar info, if you really want to, but I think it is a waste of time and effort.
7 Likes
What is also interesting is that while you scroll down, your username disappears. What is the reason for that?
I assume more space for the topic title. I agree with @cpradio, I can’t see that being a good enough reason to have an option for it. As you say yourself, you only need to scroll down to get it hidden…
Good catch, didn’t notice that the title appears.
Maybe I’ll add the option and see if it gets into core.
Well if people can so easily see your name in the top right while you’re using a Discourse forum on your phone, clearly…
5 Likes
I’m going to have to agree with others that this feature is not a good match for Discourse. If you want to hide your avatar in a Coffee shop, use something like a userscript.
Or set it to a blank png. Or create a ‘user for use in public,’ or…
Forum admins might notice there are 2 users with the same ip (and browser profile etc.) and then ban the user.
Anyhow, I guess I am alone on this one 
Forum admin’s discretion. And most forums that actively discourage sockpuppetry generally allow exceptions.
On a more general note, I’d like to know (beyond taking an unhealthy interest in the /admin/users/PERUSERPAGE, or a genuine suspicion of sockpuppetry in a particular instance) how an admin ‘might notice’ such puppetry.
Note that the only (concrete) things that an admin has to go on is IP address - the one used to register with, and the last seen for a login. Discourse doesn’t (as far as I can tell) record a per-post IP address - if in fact it does, as an admin I’d be interested in making that visible to admins. But that’s probably a post 1.0 thing to look at.
1 Like
To me, hide online status is probably 1000 times more important and even that is not in the critical department
If I was to add it would you accept the pull request?
I would suggest making it as a plugin. If many people use it we will consider putting it in core.