The discussion revolves around the meaning of “anonymous” in Discourse. rizka points out that the term has multiple meanings, which can be confusing for less experienced admins. These meanings include users who are not logged in, users who are logged in but in anonymous mode, and users who have been anonymized by staff members.
codinghorror suggests that the term “anonymous” isn’t necessarily needed for users who are not logged in, and alternatives like “guests” are proposed by rizka. supermathie argues that users who have been anonymized by staff members should be referred to as “anonymized” rather than “anonymous”.
codinghorror clarifies the different uses of the term, distinguishing between “anonymous mode”, “anonymized”, and “anonymous” in the context of browser visits. rizka is satisfied with the clarification, acknowledging that the discussion has helped to provide a clearer understanding of the term’s meaning in Discourse.
The word ‘anonymous’ currently means a few things in Discourse.
The user is not logged in or doesn’t have an account.
The user is logged in but is in anonymous mode.
Furthermore, a staff member can anonymize a user.
All this could be confusing for a less experienced admin. Could we improve nomenclature of these features somehow?
That doesn’t need to be called “anonymous”, per se, but it is a nice shorthand for “user who is not logged in”. Other synonym suggestions are welcome.
A very rare use case behind a default-off site setting. I don’t see a huge conflict here.
This is the strongest case for the literal meaning of the word.
Would it make sense to refer to anonymous users as guests? It’s the best I can think of, but my vocabulary could be broader, I admit.
I would argue this case is “anonymized” not “anonymous”. One will never have an anonymized user accessing their site.
That’s a good point so then technically we have
anonymous mode – always those two words together, and remember this is a rare mode that must be expicitly enabled, is default off, and that mode to be explicitly entered and exited by an already logged in user with a valid account.
anonymized – as in “that user was anonymized”
anonymous – as in “this is an anonymous browser visit”
That seems pretty clear to me @rizka, not sure much else is needed here.
I’m alright with it. It’s still good that we gave this some thought.