Crispy wrote
Please see a post where I said: "
To clarify, I am not against anon posting but I did not see the use case myself before. As time has gone on, others have showed me some good examples. However, I am testing huge permission changes around this module and I cannot include this in the next release (anonymous posting). Once I know the module is solid using the new permission methods (See my blog for details, its very grid like and intuitive) then it will be possible to work this in as a future enhancement. I have already marked places in the code via comments where things have to change."
I am really glad that you are seriously considering this feature after taking in the discussion in this forum.
I was actually trying to use the forum on a conference website I have created to provide a space for possible conference attendees to ask questions of the organizers, find others to participate in car-pooling and hotel sharing, etc. Like others who have posted here, I do not want to force my users to register and log in to the site to do this. There are a large number of potential users, some of which have not yet decided whether they will attend the conference. As far as they are concerned, this is a public website, not a private community space or e-commerce site. I have taken the suggestion above and used the "blog" module for some of the features but it isn't really very well suited for a discussion forum (among other reasons, you can't rename the blog components, leaving the the term "blog" all over the place and making for quite a confusing interface when it is not really being used as a blog).
As others have mentioned, I have personally participated in other forums which do allow for anonymous posting. These may involve sensitive topics, or may simply be sites where visitors do not comment frequently and would not want to go through the overhead of signing up for (and remembering!) a login and password. In some forums, some areas are restricted to members with logins while others (particularly question and answer areas, or areas with general discussion) are left open to anonymous comments. Sometimes postings from anonymous users are moderated, sometimes not.
I think this would be a valuable feature in the forum software. As others have pointed out, I am not sure how you have determined what percentage of your actual or potential users would be interested in this feature. I have in the past been disappointed that various DNN modules could not do what I wanted and given up, and I am afraid I did not think to write in with a vote to the creators of the modules. In one case, I was disappointed by the core "discussion" module, and went in search for another... and found this Forum module. This is the first time I have posted here, and the only reason I thought to do so was that I came to this discussion forum to try to discover how to allow users to post anonymously and was disappointed to learn through this thread that it could not be done. Therefore, I have not made my desired features known, so I do not see how my preferences could have been counted.
Although as a software developer I understand the dilemma of too many features, not enough time, as a software engineer and instructional designer, I am interested in learning how you determine what your users really want/need, and which features head up your list.... and, of course, in my role as graduate-student conference-organizer, I want all the features for my website as soon as possible! :)
Thank you.