Interesting idea again. Open for abuse but would be handy nontheless. And i guess admins would still know who posted it. It'd need some database work but it shouldnt be too tricky..

good thinking - but it's not logged in the discussion / referenceable way that would be useful.

This is just what I need now.
Did anyone manage to put something like this together?

FyorlCould be achieved by flagging a discussion as 'anonymous'. That way the UserID could be retained but when rendering it is simply replaced with 'Anonymous'.

That's a really good idea, if you wanted to retain authorship.

I can see arguments both for and against retaining authorship, rather than pure anonymity. Retaining authorship means there's always the possibility that the admin could go into the database and see who posted what. That's good if you want to combat abuse.

But I have participated in forums where people talk about rather sensitive stuff, in a respectable manner. I'm not sure if people would be so open if they knew the admin could look them up. But in those places, the admin has to be real careful about who they grant membership. If someone was writing a "pure anonymity" extension, it would be advisable to make the feature permissions-based, rather than grant it to everyone.

[edit] I've been to one forum that recorded and displayed the IP address of anonymous posters. It was nice because it gave a sense of who was writing what, without giving away identity. It also made it obvious if the same person was posting lots of abusive stuff. It also meant admins could look up the author, if needed, but it be an individual process, rather than a simple database look-up. [/edit]

maumauHow does one flgs discussion s 'anonyous'?

You can't, it's being proposed for a potential extension.

But that said, you could presently enable anonymous comments (not discussions) with the guest post extension. But that would mean anyone could post, not just members.