Moderator ability to change user post to anonymous?

Product Support

AI-generated summary

The discussion explores whether a forum moderator can make a user’s post anonymous. jomaxro explains there’s no direct way to anonymize a single post, but ownership can be transferred to a system or anonymous user, and revisions can be hidden. jcorto confirms this by showing how to hide revisions via the edit interface. smlemk appreciates the tip and applies it. 10ColorsTenkara asks about handling GDPR requests for users with many posts, and jomaxro clarifies that the “Anonymize User” feature removes all personal data, including quotes and mentions, providing a comprehensive solution for such cases.

1

Is it possible as a forum admin to change a user’s post to be anonymous? Or for the user to do it themselves after posting?

One of our members posted a sensitive topic and would like to hide their name. The topic became popular and so we (including the user) are hoping to not take it down, just change anonymity status.

2

There isn’t a specific method to anonymize a single post, no. What you could do is change the ownership of that post, and then hide the revision so no one (other than staff) can see the original post author. You could re-assign ownership to the @system user, or create a new “anonymous” user and than change ownership to that user.

3

How do you hide a specific revision/all revisions? I’m editing the category posts and don’t want my revisions shown.

4

Thank you @jomaxro, this is very helpful.

Hey @smlemk , I’m not sure if it works for your use case, but on the specific post I was able to hide my revision by clicking the pencil icon to the right of the post and then selecting the “Hide Revision” button.

5

Beautiful @jcorto! Thanks for that. I was able to manually hide all revisions and will be using that. Thanks!!

6

Hopefully, this isn’t too far off topic or too ignorant a question. What if you get a request (as an admin or moderator) to remove all data (such as a GDPR request) related to a specific user or IP address and that individual has hundreds of posts or more. Do those posts become anonymized or disappear altogether? What about replies to those posts that contain the requesting user’s name without the @?

7

If a user requests that all their content be removed, use the “Anonymize User” button on their admin user page. This will change their username, update all quotes/@mentions, and remove other PII. Anonymizing a user is very different from the original request here :wink:.

See Anonymizing Users in Discourse for full details.

8

Brilliant, cheers. Hadn’t seen that previously.