I really like the feature which gives invited people the ability to post immediately they have visit a Discourse forum.
Would it be possible to incorporate a step in the process so they get to choose their own user name before submitting their post rather than have one allocated to them on the basis of their email address?
Many people wouldn’t want to use their email address as the basis of a forum user name.
I agree. Not all user parts of mail addresses are that descriptive (info, etc.).
I read a related conversation on StackOverflow’s meta today: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/228079/username-suggestion-for-new-signups
Seems some users over there care about the issue of with privacy - worth considering.
They can change their name in preferences - if they think to look there and try it.
The private message that comes along with every accepted invitation explains how to change your username, just click the link right there in the PM.
Not reading? Well, that’s a different problem… 
Thanks @codinghorror for pointing that out. Indeed the lack of reading of the pm is the problem. The two people we tried it with didn’t notice the pm when reading the forum we tried it on.
By the time the acceptees of the invites have posted a message in reply to their invitations it will too late to fully protect their privacy as the information contained in the first part of their email address will be the public domain, often this will be their name.
I’d be keen for some kind of solution to this, whether it be a method to ensure people read the initial pm before posting, or to build the selection of a user name into the posting of a first message after accepting an invitation.
I have a 100% fail on the reading with my forum users. You can either blame the new users for not reading or see it as a reality: people don’t read. So we might need another solution.
In my system I require the inviter to inform the name of the invitee. I use that name to better customize the invitation email and to generate the username when he comes to the forum.
I agree it makes sense to fire up a bootbox when the person accepting the invite goes to the site:
"Welcome to Discourse
Your username will be textbox
Your name is textbox
Create my new account
[ok]"
This also gives a chance for invited users to see Eula and other bits.
Any help minispeccing this?
Maybe 'set my password as: ’
I would object to this, as it interferes with the primary goal of invitations: getting people to type a response.
Perhaps if we only do that at the time they click the reply button on their composed response so their natural human loss aversion will compel them to get past the naggy dialog.
I follow, and am totally fine to defer this to the time of response, the key though is that we should defer account creation a bit.
People should be given a chance to pick a username and name it seems a bit unfair to force one on them.
Until they trigger a public post, their account name is irrelevant, I am rather violently opposed to any popup asking for account details on an invitation until they have typed in a post and clicked submit / reply.
If they need to do it sooner than that, read the PM.
I can see and agree with your logic in your answer here @codinghorror.
An alternative could be having an option in the admin section as to how user names are asigned to people who are invited. For public facing forums user names based on email addresses might not be appropriate, where as within a non-public company based forum it might be totally appropriate.
I note now that invited users receive an email after accepting an invitation which invites them to choose a password. In the same email could they be invited to choose a user name?
At the moment with the invitation system one needs to be careful because people can be invited and immediately post a message without realising that there user name will often be their full name, which they might not want to be public. There is also an issue where people’s names will appear on members lists which often are public. People accepting invitations should know this will happen.
My preference to get around these issues would be to have the default selection of user names to be randomly generated, rather than have default to the first part of the invitee’s email address. Would it be possible to at least have this as an option in the admin settings?
I like this idea. Since users can change their username in the first few days (depending on settings), this would really add to better usernames, in stead of info.