# Use cases for anonymous posting feature
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/use-cases-for-anonymous-posting-feature/281922
**Category:** Community Building
**Tags:** anonymous-mode
**Created:** [October 11, 2023, 8:05pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/use-cases-for-anonymous-posting-feature/281922 "2023-10-11T20:05:55Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@murphyke](https://meta.discourse.org/u/murphyke)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2023, 8:05pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/use-cases-for-anonymous-posting-feature/281922/1 "2023-10-11T20:05:55Z")
I was reading [Finding originating account of anonymous posts](https://meta.discourse.org/t/finding-originating-account-of-anonymous-posts/111067) and I wanted to chime in but found that it was locked.
I think many people assume that users want to become anonymous to hide from both admins and other users, but in our community some users desire to become anonymous _only_ to hide from other users, not admins. Many, quite possibly most, people are extremely shy about revealing ignorance, and so they won’t post questions of a certain type if people know who they are. What this does is drastically shrink the effective “active” size of a community. It’s not noticeable in huge internet-scale communities, but it can make a small community completely non-viable. So for communities like this, making it easy for admins to identify anonymous posters can be very helpful – and is not a violation of privacy as long as the correct language is used around enabling the anonymizing feature.
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### Author:  [@anon65426961](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon65426961)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2023, 10:54pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/use-cases-for-anonymous-posting-feature/281922/2 "2023-10-11T22:54:47Z")
That is an important distinction, for people to be anonymous to other users so they can speak more freely but not necessarily anonymous to moderators/administrators.
I’m not familiar with how that feature works with Discourse, but I believe with the e-mail to post feature that is a way someone can send in a question by e-mail to be posted on a forum without them needing to create a forum account?