We changed the Wild Apricot privacy settings for our members because I found out that I could Google a person on Wild Apricot and all of their info (phone number, address, etc) was online and showed up in a Google search, when Wild Apricot showed up in the search result. WA needs to protect website information better, and not make it accessible to the entire internet. Try it -- google yourself, and find the WA search result.

So, this topic was forums: --- If we change privacy settings to show their names on the forum, I would be wary about their info showing up on the internet. But what is the point of having a forum in which all names show up as "anonymous"?

This depends on privacy settings of member fields - when name field is accessible, it shows the name.

The member's name should be displayed when posting in the forum, not "Anonymous". Not to be able to get this corrected is a real short coming.

The ability to use a display-name, or a nickname has also been requested by members our club. We are a 300+ member paddling club, and many of our members are known only by their "River Name", so when posting on the forum, there is some confusion. It's unlikely that our members will start using their real names on the river to reduce the confusion, so this feature ranks with high priority for our transition from our old website to Wild Apricot.

We are a sportsman club as well and this is essential... I'd be happy if the forum widget asked what field I wanted to call as the author of the forum post versus choosing the first name automatically....

Can you elaborate what is important specifically? I mean, what do you ideally want to have. There are different ideas/problems being discussed here, I just want to make sure.

This is also very important to our users.

It's not that we don't get it - it makes total sense. The question is only of priority - this request has to be considered with ~2000 other requests we are currently tracking. As of now, our main focus is new CMS in version 5.0, later in the year we have a number of enhancements for other modules, including forums. So we will do this - but it will have to wait its turn against more common requests.

I find it fascinating that WA doesn't get why people might not want to use their first name and last name given we were able to select a username to use for this forum - rather than be required to use first and last name - and many chose the option to use something other than their names. ;-)

My community focuses on a personal issue rather than professional issue. The ability to use a nickname would be a big benefit.

In professional groups, it's not uncommon for someone to prefer to use a nickname (since that's what their known by) instead of formal name as well.

Other communities have this capability.

Hope you reconsider bringing this to the table!

This would also be helpful to our site. We are a hunting sporting club. With the current political climate, users not always want their name associated with this sport for professional reasons.

I would also like this, and I can give you an example of why it is important.

We are a membership organization for museums and archives. When key staff changes at one of our member organizations, the database contact information changes as well. But unfortunately, when the database contact info changes, all the user names in old blog and forum posts change as well.

For instance, I recently left my museum job, and someone else took my place. So what's happening now is that all my earlier blog and forum posts are appearing as if my replacement posted them. Neither she nor I are pleased about this. I've mitigated things temporarily by setting her organization's (my former organization's) privacy settings to hide the user first and last name, but that's not satisfying, either--in this scenario she can never post or comment as herself.

Please consider addressing this in a new version, or please suggest a viable work-around.

I too would like to see this. Since we cannot lock the Name fields in the profile our users can, and do, change their name to anything and everything they might wish. Therefore, I would like the ability to present some other field instead of "First name Last name".

Thanks for commenting - but do not expect any change here soon, sorry. I will continue monitoring this thread to adjust the importance of the request.

+1

I agree with this requirement

Most forums allow the use of an alias so that forum members can either use their preferred name or a nickname. This may be their preference or to maintain some anonymity.

Please add the feature of being able to nominate which contact field to display against forum postings. That way the public only see this name while members can look up the alias in the contact list to see who has posted?

I represent a social club who want to use the forum extensively but do not like this current limitation. because some of our forum spaces are viewable to the public the club members do not want their personal details displayed against the post and hence want to use a preferred name or alias

Thanks

Jon

I created a work around, that works for things that I post under the admin login. I created a membership level for the admin account. Changed the first name and last name of the admin account to reflect the name of my organization. So now when I post things under "News and Announcements" forum, it does not come up as "Anonymous" but now shows up as posted by my organization's name. May not work for all profiles, but it did for my admin one!

Nothing, sorry.

But the question is - why? You do not want to reveal real name but want to substitute it with some profile name (nickname?). What is profile name in this case? Can you give us some examples of such profile names?

I agree this is very much needed. essential.

Any change with this?

Unfortunately, this is not possible now.
Any comments from other on this are welcome.