Part of the problem is that Discourse blocks both personal details and board history through profile privacy. They don’t need to be linked that way. I imagine some people chose to have profile privacy because they want their personal details to remain private, like location, homepage, timezone, etc. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they want their board history to be private, like join date, posts, badges, etc. It would probably make more sense if the private profile option just hid the values which were on the Profile tab rather than disabling the profile link entirely:
The other info on your profile, like board history, could always be shown regardless of your profile privacy setting.
But the only reason you provide that info in the first place is so that people can see it in your public profile. They are all optional entries. You don’t want anyone to know the URL for your website? Then don’t put in the URL for your website. What you are suggesting is like getting a nametag that you don’t need and aren’t required to wear, putting your name on it, putting it on, then covering it with duct tape for security.
The benefit of making a profile private is that someone doesn’t have to worry about what is and isn’t shown. I like the private profile option because I don’t have to worry what is and isn’t shown on my profile. It’s the same reason I shred all my receipts rather than looking at each one to decide if it needs to be shredded or not. I just shred them all and don’t worry about. Here I just set the profile to private and I don’t have to consider what is and isn’t shown in the profile. I like being as anonymous as possible, so I like the private profile option for that ability.
The profiles here actually have a lot of info. A lot more than is typical on message boards. There are 4 main tabs and 6 minor tabs. And on those pages there is a lot of stats and other info. Maybe there isn’t a security issue in there, maybe there is. Or maybe someone just doesn’t want everyone to know that they spend 23.999 hours a day on the board. No matter the reason, making a profile private means they don’t have to look at the all info on the 10 pages of profile info to decide if they’re okay with it all being shown. They just set it to private and they can hide it all.
So, i, also default to setting my profile private everywhere. So I get that. I changed mine to public here after learning that it wasn’t actually making any difference, EXCEPT that seeing your profile to private breaks some board functionality. (Or, you know, if for some reason you entered you real name and address but didn’t want to share that info. But i don’t enter that kind of information when i didn’t want to share it, so I never had. And you might notice that i try to be vague about where i live when it comes up in discussions.)
But it happens that private profiles on discourse are linked to a problem with the functionality of “show me what this poster said”. It’s not actually protecting the poster from an actual stalker, because with a little extra work discourse will give out that information anyway. It just makes it annoying for other posters.
So…
No, the decision hasn’t been made. But i am leaning strongly towards “disable private profiles”. If anything, it seems bad to imply some security that’s not actually there.
The one sticking point is that i think you ought to be able to hide whether you are online right now. And that’s the one other concrete difference. But those features may be separable.
No, I’m indifferent to whether any particular poster has a private profile. As mentioned above, it’s not even private from the mods.
But the question has arisen of whether the board should disable the function. And if the only things it is being used for is to give a false sense of security and to aid posters who want to make it hard for other posters to read what they’ve written, then i don’t see why i should support having the feature.
My argument is that the profile can’t reveal any information you didn’t already give to Discourse. And, if you are privacy focused, you would avoid giving it any identifiable information in the first place.
Reddit, as mentioned above, has a profile page for everyone, and you cannot get rid of it. But it also has no information on me other than my posts. It originally didn’t even have a email, though I did finally add one using a throwaway account because subreddits seemed to think it would boost security to require emails to post even if you’d been posting there for years.
The only thing that my profile has on it that identifies me is my birthday, which I added back in the vBulletin days so I could exchange birthday greetings. And I’ve since added my pronouns. But that’s it.
So I’m not worried that having my profile displayed will violate my privacy. I’m sure I’ve done more to damage my privacy in my posts.
I agree. In post #1 I suggested linking the hidden profile and topic filter features together is a design flaw in Discourse’s user interface. The optimal solution would be to always show the filter button. As noted that is not something the SDMB has control over.
Regarding making all private profiles public, I don’t think that’s a good idea unless the administration scrubs the database first. Some people may not get the notice for whatever reason and then suddenly their home address, entered years ago with the understanding it is shown only to vBulletin friends/admins, is published online without consent.
Also, what’s up with chela’s name being changed in quoteboxes?
Did any of the vBulletin user data actually make it over to discourse?
EDIT: Does discourse even have those fields for user data? The only information I ever put in my vBulletin profile was “New England” in the location field. Not only do I not see that on my profile now, I do not even see a location field period.
Which specific fields in the user data are you concerned about? Not the ones from vBulletin, but rather the ones that actually exist in discourse. I’m not seeing anything. No fields for me to enter personal data anywhere.
I suppose someone might put their SSN under “real name” then set their profile to private but I honestly don’t have a ton of sympathy for such a person.
You all have been here longer than I have - apparently a long time ago subscriptions were mandatory. So for a time all users would be expected to give a real name and address and working email, at least for payment purposes. I’m not sure whether payment processing was always outsourced to a third-party site. I know I personally emailed TubaDiva to purchase a gift subscription for someone. We haven’t had subscriptions at all since moving to Discourse four years ago, though.
As for modern Discourse fields, there is a location field. Click on my name and it says Florida. There are also fields for real name and DOB. Even exposing name and DOB without consent is problematic, in my opinion.
Where do I see if I’ve hidden my profile? It’s something I might well have done when the new board came out, that’s kind of my default. I don’t think mine is hidden, but in scanning through Preferences just now I didn’t see a clear Hide Profile checkbox or slider.
To see yours, click your avatar to go to your personal page, then choose [Preferences] from the top line menu then [Profile] from the second line menu.
