Private users in Discourse

[outofthebox (Carson)]

Is it possible for members of a Discourse site to opt-out of being displayed in the member directory?

[downey (Michael Downey)]

I’m not aware of any way to do this.

You could deactivate the enable user directory site setting, but that would turn off the directory altogether. You could also enable hide user profiles from public which at least prevents non-users from seeing anyone’s info.

[tvavrda (Tomas Vavrda)]

We proberen Discourse te gebruiken als een privéforum voor ondersteuning. Het heeft vrijwel alles wat we nodig hebben en is geweldig om informatie te delen, terwijl het eenvoudige workflows (tags) en toewijzingen toestaat.

Het scenario voor een project is:

1. Maak een groep die alleen leden kunnen zien en sta onze klanten toe om lid te worden.
2. Maak een categorie voor het project.
3. Maak subcategorieën voor taken, notulen, enz.

We hebben het aanmaken van vrije tags uitgeschakeld, omdat deze voor iedereen zichtbaar konden zijn. Maar privé-taskgroepen voor elk project/categorie zullen volstaan.

We hebben ook precies gedaan wat hier werd gepost: gebruikersdirectory uitgeschakeld en profielen verborgen.

Het ENIGE dat er slecht uitziet, is dat elke gebruiker elke andere klant kan vermelden of, erger nog, privéberichten kan sturen (privéberichten kunnen echter worden uitgeschakeld, dus dat is waarschijnlijk prima). Maar ik zou vermeldingen niet willen uitschakelen. Ze zijn te waardevol.

Is hier een oplossing voor?
De gebruikers bevinden zich in volledig verschillende groepen die geen categorieën met elkaar delen, dus ik veronderstelde dat ze ook de gemeenschappelijke gebruikersdirectory niet zouden delen. Maar ik begrijp waarom dit niet het geval is. Maar de mogelijkheid om echt privé-gebruikersgroepen te creëren die volledig gescheiden zijn van de rest van de groepen, zou fijn zijn.

Een instelling Vermeldingen alleen toestaan aan categorieleden zou erg fijn zijn. Zo zou je niemand (zelfs medewerkers niet per ongeluk) buiten de categorie kunnen vermelden.

BEWERKING: Gebruikers lekken ook op de pagina Badges. Dus we moesten het badgesysteem uitschakelen om een andere “gebruikersdirectory” te verbergen.

[khenmu (John Sweeney)]

As you’re talking about customers, I would assume there is money available, which means having options. I think you need to seriously consider whether you have a community or a collection of communities - and when you have decided that, ask yourself what makes sense in that context.

If you want each group to be truly segregated, a single Discourse install is not the way to go.

If I might comment on some specific points;

 

@tvavrda

The ONLY thing that looks bad is that any user can actually mention any other customer or worse, send them private messages (private messages can be disabled though so that is probably fine).

Is this a regular occurrence? It sounds like a hypothetical concern to me - I’m not sure why your customer’s users would be mentioning or messaging random strangers. I’m also surprised at users being notified of mentions if they don’t have access to the category in which it happened. That sounds like a bug, if you can confirm that it has indeed happened.

 

@tvavrda

The users are in completely different groups who do not share any categories with each other so I supposed they would also not share the common user directory.

I do not wish to be unkind, but this is not a reasonable assumption.

You created a forum which has a community and members of that community are naturally discovering each other. I’m not sure this is the best possible implementation for your use-case, at least as far as I understand it. But you simply cannot expect the software to account for your atypical setup of an almost Reddit-like community of communities and radically adjust itself to accommodate your desire to hide this from people. You have a forum and it is acting as a forum.

If you want multiple forums (fora?) with distinct communities, then you can spin up additional installs of Discourse to fit your situation. I genuinely think this would be your best option in the long-term.

 

@tvavrda

A setting Allow mentions only to category members would be really great. So you could not mention anyone (even staff members couldn’t by mistake) outside of the category.

You might be able to find someone in marketplace who can create a custom plugin to this for you. Please be aware that these people will be expecting to get paid for their work.

 

@tvavrda

EDIT: Users also leak in the Badges page. So had to disable badge system in order to hide another “user directory”.

Would using display: none on certain elements not be sufficient here?

It’s not making the usernames completely impossible to discover, but we aren’t talking about the likes of people’s private health information. When users can already discover usernames by manually tagging people and seeing auto-complete suggestions, I would this would be sufficient…

[tvavrda (Tomas Vavrda)]

Don’t worry, I am not expecting that someone will automatically make Discourse exactly as I wish We have been using Discourse for a public forum since 2014. I can say I am a moderately experienced admin.

I just decided to also use it as an internal tool for other projects that are not really a community. And since I see and know from other mentions here on meta, that Discourse team is also going this use case direction (as for example Discourse for Teams is), I am just trying to give a little bit of a feedback here.

@khenmu

whether you have a community or a collection of communities

Neither of that. It’s just using Discourse as a support portal as it perfectly does everything we would expect out of it. The only real thing that makes me uncomfortable is that our different partners and customers could see others. First of all some projects are really not public and second it can just be confusing.

@khenmu

I’m also surprised at users being notified of mentions if they don’t have access to the category in which it happened. That sounds like a bug, if you can confirm that it has indeed happened.

I tested it and seems that the user mentioned in a category to which they have no access does not get a notification

So by disabling all the different pieces described earlier made it quite good, the only thing remaining is that those users are still appearing when you start mentioning someone. But you cannot message them and you do not see a full name. It’s acceptable but the setting I described would make it perfect

[Earnie_Baird (Earnie)]

This is a much needed Trust + Safety feature. For any number of reasons, there are people who want to be part of a community (read messages, PM, etc.) but don’t want to be seen / found in the member directory.

As an admin, I’ve been asked by a user to hide them from the member directory and there’s no way to do it. Unfortunately even if I turn off the enable user directory setting, they still appear in the member list for chat channels.

A simple checkbox in preferences to opt out of being seen in the member directory and chat channel member list (except for by staff/admins) would be greatly appreciated.

[Heliosurge (Dan DeMontmorency)]

@khenmu

@tvavrda

The ONLY thing that looks bad is that any user can actually mention any other customer or worse, send them private messages (private messages can be disabled though so that is probably fine).

Is this a regular occurrence? It sounds like a hypothetical concern to me - I’m not sure why your customer’s users would be mentioning or messaging random strangers

The @mention in a topic will populate a list as will starting to type letters. With this angle one simple solution is to see about modifying Discobot tutorial to omit the mention part of the tutorial or finance a component or plugin

Op however can disable mentions by the looks of it here.

If badges are not really needed. Disable them and provide forum interface help topics

@khenmu

If you want multiple forums (fora?) with distinct communities, then you can spin up additional installs of Discourse to fit your situation. I genuinely think this would be your best option in the long-term

Discourse Meta is quite capable of achieving that with a proper setup to that end. See communities using discourse that do use it as a customer support platform

[Heliosurge (Dan DeMontmorency)]

@tvavrda

I tested it and seems that the user mentioned in a category to which they have no access does not get a notification

This was I believe part of the patching mentions in pm.

[Heliosurge (Dan DeMontmorency)]

@Earnie_Baird

As an admin, I’ve been asked by a user to hide them from the member directory and there’s no way to do it. Unfortunately even if I turn off the enable user directory setting, they still appear in the member list for chat channels.

Not by default I don’t think so. (Didn’t realize this was a bumped topic by a reply).

There is a theme-component that hides staff members on about page.

Hide staff from /about page

Summary Hide staff from about page Repository GitHub - literatecomputing/discourse-hide-admins-about: Theme component to hide some admin users from about page Install Guide How to install a theme or theme component New to Discourse Themes? Beginner’s guide to using Discourse Themes Install this theme component Optionally hide some staff from the /about page Entering users like this: [image] will make th…

The DeV might be willing to make a similar component if you have a budget. Not sure if this could be done to add a user setting to preferences without a plugin. But otherwise an admin could add a user to a list in the component.

[pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman)]

@Earnie_Baird

they still appear in the member list for chat channels.

You might argue that is a bug.

Wait. Did they change this user setting to off? Allow other users to send me personal messages and chat direct messages. Looks like the feature you request exists already?