Currently if a user want to leave a Discourse community, he/she can’t delete everything due to limits of Discourse. The recommended thing to do is to request admins to anonymize the user’s profile. The problem is, some users are OP of popular topics, so people remember the OP even if he/she is anonymized. And then using the profile page, people can still see everything he/she posted. Anonymization is only like changing a username, nothing more. Is it possible to remove the profile pages for anonymized users?
AI-generated summary
A discussion on removing profile pages for anonymized users has been initiated by physixfan. The user highlighted that anonymization only changes the username, and the profile page remains accessible, allowing others to view their posts.
jammyDodger suggested a temporary solution, recommending anonymized users to hide their public profile and presence features in the Preferences/Interface page. However, this method does not prevent others from searching for the anonymized username and viewing their posts.
physixfan pointed out the search issue and proposed hiding search results for anonymized usernames.
jammyDodger provided a screenshot of the “Hide my public profile and presence features” option and explained that it is only available if the admin setting “allow users to hide profile” is enabled. physixfan confirmed that this option was not available on their forum due to the setting not being enabled, but was able to find it after enabling the setting.
You can hide the profile by selecting “Hide my public profile and presence features” on the Preferences/Interface page of the anonymous user, if that’s any use in the short term?
Though I think users could still do an @mention search for the anon username, and pull up all their posts that way.
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Yes, searching is also a problem. Probably Discourse can also hide the search results for anonymized usernames accordingly.
I’m sorry but I can’t find it. Could you post a screenshot? Thanks!
You should have a similar box on your own profile here on meta - Preferences/Interface
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Got it, thanks! It turns out that there’s a setting I did not check, therefore this option did not exist in our forum. Now i can see it!
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For anyone else looking at this topic later, the admin setting is 