I can’t figure out if it’s a bug or not. But why when a user is invited by another user, the invited user in his profile has publicly written “invited by the user”? I mean, maybe it should only be visible to staff members, right? Why should everyone know that I was invited by a particular user? Sorry if maybe I was wrong.
6 Likes
Maybe a setting for this could exist, trust level required to view invited status?
1 Like
Is there a reason for it to be hidden? It doesn’t strike me as being sensitive information. One could ask a similar question for just about every field on profile pages with about as strong an argument.
I think it’s important that preferences remain curated; there’s a UX cost to each addition - the more of them there are, the harder it is to make each one discoverable. I don’t think this is a great candidate. Only admins can change site settings, and they could just as easily use CSS to achieve the same thing.
Something like this should get the job done;
.invited-by {
display: none !important;
}
If staff did want to retain access to the information, they could use :not(.staff) or something.
1 Like
Honestly, being a public forum it is right that, unless you keep the profile private, anyone can see your generic statistics (reading times, how many posts you have published or how many likes you have given / received, etc.) but a normal user shouldn’t know who invited me. I mean, I don’t understand why a “correlation” should be public. There is a reason that when you sign up for online games, only you and whoever you invited know about this. If I go to a user’s profile, I can’t know if he has been invited by someone or not. It is something that exists only here. And you can’t say it’s not a privacy issue. Here we are dealing with “user correlations”, not just public activity information in the forum.
For the solution given above: hiding with the CSS does not imply that the information remains publicly visible. And what I’m saying is that it just shouldn’t be that way by default.
Respectfully, that’s exactly my position - I do not view it as a privacy issue.
Discourse makes public many more “correlations” than just who has invited you. You say that the number of likes you have given is public - are you aware that the list of posts you have liked is, too? I’m not trying to argue with you; I’m just trying to understand 1) whether you’re specifically bothered by this particular information for reasons you haven’t shared with us, or, 2) whether you’re unaware of some of the other information that Discourse makes publicly accessible.
I don’t find the games comparison compelling - their online profiles typically focus on what a person has achieved in-game rather than their website activities. I’d cite WoW as an example.
For my part, I don’t view this information being any different to, say, being able to add other forum users as friends and that list being public. It’s a “correlation”, but… is it sensitive information?
I’m just not sure why someone would specifically object to that, in light of how much Discourse tends to share out of the box. If you care strongly about privacy and either weren’t aware of some of the things Discourse shares with other users or are planning on posting other threads about them, hey, fair enough - that’s completely legitimate. If you specifically care about this, I can’t help feeling like you’ve a particular reason that you’re not sharing with us (and you do not have to), but in my experience, the team tends to be the most responsive to requests for changes when they can see the use case and thus really empathise with the person requesting the change.
From my point of view, the fact that other users know the posts I like is not a big deal. As it is a public community and if I participate, others must know that I as a user have liked or attended an event or have commented on something. Otherwise what participation would it be? On the other hand, it is all public, even with regard to reading times etc. I don’t see it as a big problem, there are those who read more, there are those who participate less, there are those who contribute in one way and those in another. Instead I see the correlations between users as a privacy issue.
But above all, why if I join the community with an invitation, must I forever have marked in my profile that I was invited by another user? It makes the profile completely different from one who signed up normally.
Anyway, maybe we could use the fantastic Poll feature to understand what other users think (if they decide to vote). Because in the end it’s just my opinion.
Do you think it should be public that you have been invited (with the username of the person who invited you) on your profile?
- Yes, that’s okay.
- No, I’d rather not.
0 voters
I think I would rather not have that information displayed, and wouldn’t mind an option to ‘display on profile’ or not. Hiding it with CSS is only cosmetic, so is still there to be revealed in safe mode or tweaking the rule in the inspector.
I agree with @yhh9xdq7dc that it’s a different type of information than read time/post count/like list/etc as it hints at a relationship outside of the community rather than being limited solely to information gathered from activity within the community.
For some communities it may be more sensitive than others, and an option to publicly display or not makes sense to me.
2 Likes
I just can’t understand why such information is so meaningful to show public at all. It could be personal, if there is some situations where it is needed.
This is again a solution that should be done using a component/plugin.
CSS is made for a tool to change look. Not hiding functionalities. I know some will upset now but everytime when CSS fix is needed it tells more bad UI/UX-desing or lazyness of devs than anything else. Plus every CSS changes increase the possibility of conflict because no one can’t remember all made changes.
Edit:
And before someone else points this out: yes, using components/plugins will increase risk to fall in same swamp where WordPress-world lives. Genarally speaking this is loose/loose-situation, kind of.