I am setting up a community where members opt in to displaying their public profile in the forums. In my use case, if they do not opt in, they should not be visible at all to anyone else in the community except for staff. Either way, they should be able to see and message/chat staff, and vice versa. …

Have you investigated this admin setting? [CleanShot 2026-09-23 at 16.35.57] Also, unless you’re gating content to a private category, could they just not sign up for the community? I know that sounds sacrilegious from a community manager. If they’re just looking to subscribe to categories, could…

Hey thanks for the suggestion. Yes, that admin setting is enabled and is the default. And yes, my goal is to allow users to join and only talk to me directly via their private category, chat and messages. So they should be able to see and talk to me and I should be able to see and talk to them. But…

I think you can disable the user directory using enable_user_directory. But of course that also impacts users that don’t want to be hidden. How do you hide those users in search, in the lists of group members like https://meta.discourse.org/g/trust_level_0 and in the autocomplete for @mentions and …

Maybe it’s also worth quoting the reply you got a few years ago [image] Hidden user profiles are not completely hidden, shows with "this user's public profile is hidden" Feature It sounds like hiding the profile is being confused with denying the existence of …

Thanks, Moin! Wow, that topic is a blast from the past, from a past life when I was at the job before the one I had at Discourse! :rofl: The concerns now are a bit different. Back then I was trying to set something up that I wouldn’t even recommend anymore.. a helpdesk group and a helpdesk user. N…

[image] tobiaseigen: I’ve set the visibility of these groups so users can’t see them at all. How did you do that? On my forum, the visibility settings are not available for default groups. While the trust level groups aren’t shown in the group list, users can still see the group and its membe…

[image] Moin: How did you do that? I don’t recall how I removed the “all groups” pulldown from the user directory. The trust level groups also do not show up to regular users on the groups list or on their profile pages. That must be a setting somewhere. I’m not seeking perfection here. […

Feature request: respect "Hide my public profile" user pref in user directory and Who's Online

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Moin September 23, 2026, 10:03pm 5

Maybe it’s also worth quoting the reply you got a few years ago

Topic		Replies	Views
How to hide myself from /u page？ Support	8	343	January 3, 2025
Private users in Discourse Feature	9	1376	April 29, 2024
Hidden user profiles are not completely hidden, shows with "this user's public profile is hidden" Feature	8	2816	July 31, 2019
Hiding your user profile doesn't hide your stats in the user directory Feature user-directory	8	1912	July 17, 2020
Split profile hiding and presence Feature whos-online , chat , completed	18	2427	November 13, 2024

Feature request: respect "Hide my public profile" user pref in user directory and Who's Online

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