So someone opens a thread, which I read. But then I’m curious about what other threads they started, what posts they’ve made, how long they’ve been on the board and so forth but clicking on their name results in a message, “This user’s public profile is hidden.” No information is available about the poster. Can this be changed?
Your profile is hidden.
OK, I can see the humor in that. Note that I didn’t deliberately choose that. The preference may have been carried over from vBulletin, where I think I deliberately opted not to display whether I was online but you could still see past posts and threads. Here it seems much more restrictive.
So now at least, your profile is not hidden from me. Did you change something, and if so, what was it?
Yes, I made a change (mostly because it would be hypocritical not to change the setting). Under Preferences, Interface, I unchecked “Hide my public profile and presence feature”. Not the easiest thing to find, IMHO. Does anyone know what the default is for this option? Does it default to checked or unchecked?
I’ve noticed that when a someone’s profile is hidden, I can’t send then a private message either.
As for searching for topics and posts, you can use the search bar at the top and type “@” followed by the username. For example, “@Max_S” will search for posts by me.
~Max
Because your profile is not hidden, this works. I just tried it with @Dr_Paprika (who recently posted a thread I am active on) and this does not work.
Can’t it be done from your control panel?
Well, I tried on two members with hidden profiles. It says this user is not accepting private messages.
~Max
Maybe you have to uncheck the box that says "search this topic". Here is a link to a search of Dr_Paprika's posts:
https://boards.straightdope.com/search?q=%40Dr_Paprika%20 order%3Alatest
P.S. typing out a username with the "@" sign in a post sends that user a notification.
Thanks! (I thought I had unchecked it. Oops.)