How will anonymous posting mode work?

Some anonymous sites provide the ability to hash a “passcode” with anonymous posts you make. When you post them, the password gets hashed on the server, so if you use the same passcode you’ll always get the same hash. That way anonymous users can identify themselves.

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user_id == -2 perhaps? (@system is -1)

yeah, that is one possible plan, going to wait for @codinghorror to provide feeback on this first.

I am tempted to leave stuff more or less like it is now (with a tweak or 2 first) and see how customers use it prior to adding this.

I think I am going to stamp on this a “this is done enough for now” stamp (bugs pending :tm:)

I just added a site setting “anonymous account duration minutes” that defaults to 1 week. This means you get to keep your anon account for 1 week from last post you make. After that it cycles.

I went ahead and set this setting to 1 minute here, for kicks. Which gives a strong anonymity option, with a side effect of lots and lots of accounts.

I also disabled the ability to like and act on posts.

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/4bfca12b1168816e922b099ee72afa92cb4aa73c

I strongly believe this needs to be used in the wild for a bit before we decide if it makes sense to switch or tweak this implementation. As it stands it can be super anonymous or mildly anonymous, up to the admins discretion.

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I am anonymous 1, hear me roar :rooster:

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You are making an excellent point there @anonymous1 :gift_heart:

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Nobody knows who I am! I could be anyone! :laughing: :question:

Is the feature supposed to work globally?

Can it be limited to a single topic, or a single category? That would make a lot more sense to me, than allowing anonymous contributions all over the place. (Sorry if I misunderstood the scope.)

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Yes

No, and also, not planned.

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This is now complete, closing, if we need to make any changes to current system a new topic can be opened

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