User profiles hidden from public, but the badges are not

[Stephen]

There’s plenty of evidence out there that gamification improves acquisition rates, but I’m not sure anyone has tested the theory with Discourse.

As each community is unique to some degree it’s not the kind of thing thats easy to A/B test.

[Jagster (Jakke Lehtonen)]

@Stephen

There’s plenty of evidence out there that gamification improves acquisition rates

In the meaning it will increase account creation? I doubt that. That kind of evidence is from participants that are in a community already.

I would be very worried if a forum is more desirable for a random anon because of (meaningless) badges and points than content itself.

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

I think I agree with this:

@Lilly

i sort of feel like badges should be hidden or disabled for anonymous users by default.

I think it makes sense to add a new setting show_badges_to_anonymous (default: false) . Or (if anyone can think of a valid reason) show_badges_allowed_groups (default: @tl0). Maybe we seed the data to be backward-compatible for existing sites (default: true / everyone) respectively.

What’s your take @awesomerobot?

[awesomerobot (Kris)]

@Jagster

I would be very worried if a forum is more desirable for a random anon because of (meaningless) badges and points than content itself.

That’s a little unfair, we’ve certainly come across people who enjoy the “completionist” aspect — and the badges generally teach and encourage good behavior. I certainly enjoy plenty of seemingly meaningless things from time to time.

@Lilly

a scenario where a particular forum may find it useful to let non-members see badges, like one designed with gamification as an essential part of the user experience

Yes, I think this is good point to consider. There are some communities that put a lot of effort into custom badges.

@AquaL1te

But establishing a user directory and a general idea about the users is still possible.

I don’t see any user information on the /badges page to be worried about… that’s just badge name and grant count.

It seems like a safe call to hide the individual badge pages when hide user profiles from public is enabled? There’s less data there, but those are certainly directory-like pages. The intent of an admin using that setting is to protect specific user information… and that seems to fit. This information is also available on posts… but some sites also hide most posts from the public.

So then the setting would become:

hide user profiles from public
Disable user cards, user profiles and user directory for anonymous users.
Hide the user directory, user profiles, user cards, and badges earned from anonymous users

@mcwumbly

I think it makes sense to add a new setting show_badges_to_anonymous

Not strongly opposed to this either, though I wonder if it’s cleaner to roll it up into the existing setting based on the admins intent to hide user info rather than creating yet another setting to be aware of?

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

@awesomerobot

So then the setting would become:

hide user profiles from public
Disable user cards, user profiles and user directory for anonymous users.
Hide the user directory, user profiles, user cards, and badges earned from anonymous users

@mcwumbly

I think it makes sense to add a new setting show_badges_to_anonymous

Not strongly opposed to this either, though I wonder if it’s cleaner to roll it up into the existing setting based on the admins intent to hide user info rather than creating yet another setting to be aware of?

I’m in support of making the smaller change you’re suggesting first here.

[Lilly]

this simpler solution makes total sense to me too. the badges earned should an optional setting as part of the hide_user_profiles_from_public and the badges pages itself being viewable doesn’t matter.

[AquaL1te]

The badge page doesn’t matter indeed, it could be nice to see the badges. However, you can also see the members, which also includes the badges for the trust levels (which is a user directory) and others. This provides insight into user activity for guest users. I don’t like that. It’s a great feature to get to know fellow users, but it’s no one else’s business to get insight on the forum profiling. I consider that private information on user activity.

If it would work the same as the groups, then that would be a great middle ground solution. Groups are listed on my forum, you just cannot see the members as a guest. Here is an example. As a logged in user you can see the group members.

[tobiaseigen]

The task here appears to be quite well defined already by @awesomerobot:

@awesomerobot

I don’t see any user information on the /badges page to be worried about… that’s just badge name and grant count.

It seems like a safe call to hide the individual badge pages when hide user profiles from public is enabled? There’s less data there, but those are certainly directory-like pages. The intent of an admin using that setting is to protect specific user information… and that seems to fit. This information is also available on posts… but some sites also hide most posts from the public.

So then the setting would become:

hide user profiles from public
Disable user cards, user profiles and user directory for anonymous users.
Hide the user directory, user profiles, user cards, and badges earned from anonymous users

Stated more explicitly, https://meta.discourse.org/badges would be available to anons with this setting enabled, but https://meta.discourse.org/badges/9/autobiographer would not.