If a community requests the full name of its users at registration, by setting /admin/settings/users/ “full name required” ON,
… but, for privacy reasons, does not expose the Full Name to the community (so /admin/setting/users/ “enable names” is OFF),
… then the Full Name cannot be accessed by anyone, even an admin.
Request
When the FullName is required (/admin/settings/users/ “full name required” ON) but is not exposed to the community for privacy reasons ( /admin/setting/users/ “enable names” OFF),
-> we would like the full name to be viewable by an admin on the user admin page, where the “name” is displayed.
Discussion
Our community uses Discourse as both a forum and a workflow engine. We require Full Names to verify that our users are legit, but, for privacy reasons, we do not expose these Full Names to the community. As a result (see above) our admins cannot see the users’ Full Names.
It makes no sense to us because, if even our admins can’t see it, for what reason would anyone want the Full Name on?
So we have a polling process in the background, polling registration data every 10 minutes and posting it to a location the admins can see.
We believe that this does not conform to the implicit expectations that everyone shares (or at least, that we have) of forum behavior:
we feel that there is an implicit expectation that admins can see everything
we feel that, in this same implicit understanding, mods, and certainly group owners and others, should not see everything and are on a need-to-know basis.
therefore, we feel that, when the Full Name is required but not exposed to the community, the admins should still see and have access to it, in the user admin page, where the “name” field is displayed.
we do not consider that the Full Name should be displayed in other locations or to other roles if /admin/setting/users/ “enable names” is OFF
I think always displaying the value of the Name field on the user’s admin page is a good idea. There is also a UX issue with the way the Name field is currently displayed on the user’s admin page when enable names is disabled. The name field can be edited, but it is always displayed as empty:
Any fixes or updates on this yet? Just setup our community and identified the same issue. When we get new member sign ups I have to export the user list to CSV in order to see what they enter as their full names.
If the user can see their own name on their edit profile page then an admin can at the exact same url. If the user can’t see their own name in their edit profile page then I think that you’re right that no one can.
What problem is this solving? You want admins and users to know what user’s names are but no one else?
Most definitely no one can. I have also confirmed this via my own separate regular user accounts.
As I stated above, we require full names from users upon signup but we hide the full name on public profiles. This also hides the full name from admins in the portal when reviewing the registration for approval. We require admins first review the signup before approving access to the forum.
The problem this solves is it removes a lot of time and inconvenience for admins upon the review/approval process. Currently, admins (and mods) must export the user file to CSV, wait for that email to arrive, and then see if the new user actually entered a real full name. We also have a process to verify these names.
It would save a lot of time for admins to be able to view the full name of the new user upon review, within the admin section.
It is hard for me to imagine that there are enough people who want such a feature that one will be added (unless, perhaps, you are an enterprise customer). That’s not for me to decide, though.
I think a rather simple plugin could add the name to the serializer for admins and then a theme component (which would be part of the plugin) could add the real name wherever you want (that there is a plugin outlet).
I would likely do it for $500 to $1000 or perhaps a tiny bit less. You could post in marketplace or contact me.
