I have been fooling around with this option and reading up on it and don't think I can accomplish what I want.  But let me run it by you gurus first.

I pay for our WA site and thus users are guests in my "house" and participate at my will and by my rules.  Therefore I do not want people to be able to do things anonymously on the site.  For example, I don't want people to be able to turn off public access to their name and therefore their Discussion Forum posts show up as "name is hidden".  Sure, I can see their identities when logged in as the admin.  But no one else can.  There are many reasons why I don't want people to be able to hide on our site.  The biggest being that people are much more inclined to be nasty and post things they otherwise would not if they feel they can be anonymous.  And sure, I can police that and delete offending posts, but I don't want to take the time to do that for my huge user group.

From what I can tell, even though I can set the default to show all profile information, a user can go in and override that setting, basically hiding whatever info they want or even turning their profile off.  Is there a way for me to lock that down so that they cannot change it?  Thanks.

For privacy reasons we feel each member should decide which fields are shown in their own profile so it is not possible to prevent members from changing the profile access settings.

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Jon Preston,
Supportive Apricot

Is there a way for me to hide my "user name", "date joined" and "# of posts" that appears to the left of my posts in the Wild Apricot forums?

AFAIK There is no way to hide these fields for a specific user.

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

LOL.  Exactly!  Thanks Dmitry.  I was trying to make a point based on what jonpreston says above "For privacy reasons we feel each member should decide which fields are shown in their own profile".  I guess what's good for the goose isn't good for the gander.  Wild Apricot does not allow people to anonymously post on their forums.  A user name and other info is always shown by default.  The user cannot hide it.  And that is fine...because it's WA's site and if we want to use it then we use it under WA's conditions.

So why not give your paying customer's the same option on their own sites?  Allow us to give the users the ability to change these settings or allow us to lock them down.  No user should have the assumption of privacy when they use a site that I pay for and provide to them for free.  Who does that? 

I understand your point. I will move this thread into wishlist so that we can get feedback from other users to prioritize this against other requests.

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

You guys are great with your quick replies to every post.  Kudos.

Please see http://community.wildapricot.com/thread/12902.aspx for background info.

In summary, current functionality is that administrators can set default per-field privacy settings on membership fields but each member can override these settings for his/her profile and show less or more. (See http://help.wildapricot.com/display/DOC/Privacy+settings )

Based on all the input we have been receiving I believe the best solution is to change it to:

Administrators to set default privacy settings AND specify for each field whether it can be changed by member with the following options:
1) Member can't change settings for this field at all.
2) Member can ONLY RESTRICT it further. (e.g. Admin can set email field to only show to Members,  member can decide to hide it altogether - but CAN NOT decide to show it to Public visitors )
3) Member can change it in any direction - to restrict OR to extend access (e.g. Admin can set email field to only show to Members, but member can decide to show it to Public visitors or to hide it altogether)

This is a substantial chunk of development work but I think this is the only way to provide flexibility for varying needs of clients.

I would appreciate comments and votes on this.

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

Sounds great from my end!

I like the idea. For me it is a question of priorities of other wish list needs that are more important to me.

Moving this to roadmap.

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

I agree, I think it would be very beneficial to let the admin lock privacy settings for certain fields.  Forums have a way of going bad when people can post anonymously.  Personally, for my site, I would lock it so members first names and their company name is listed on the forums.  If the member chooses to show more information (such as their last name) then the member can change that in their privacy settings. 

Moving this back to the wishlist for the time being.

 

At present users have full control over which of their fields are visible (anyone / members / no access) and indeed can hide their profile completely from everyone else.

In some community sites this is inappropriate as it allows users to enjoy the rights of membership (since they can see other's records) while not taking on the responsibilities of membership (since others can't see their record either at all or enough of it to be useful).

I'd thus like to see the Member Profile Page modified so that in addition to setting default access levels for each field the admin can (where necessary) prevent the member from changing the default setting.  (I envisage a fourth column on the table with tick boxes labeled "User Can Edit" or similar)

Members would still be able to see what setting was applied to each field in their own record but some fields might be grayed out where site configuration prevented the member editing the privacy setting for that field.

If a member felt unhappy with the minimum level of responsibility to other members required by the site then they always have the opportunity to leave.

Wondering why was this moved back to the wish list?

There are certain field that we need our members to provide, but we always want private. For example, we do not want phone numbers to show up on our list at all.

 

On the support forum this thread seems to be missing from the roadmap and you cannot vote on it in the wish list.

 

http://community.wildapricot.com/thread/12906.aspx

 

You suggested this perfect solution for our needs, but I can't seem to vote on it: 

Based on all the input we have been receiving I believe the best solution is to change it to:

Administrators to set default privacy settings AND specify for each field whether it can be changed by member with the following options:
1) Member can't change settings for this field at all.
2) Member can ONLY RESTRICT it further. (e.g. Admin can set email field to only show to Members,  member can decide to hide it altogether - but CAN NOT decide to show it to Public visitors )
3) Member can change it in any direction - to restrict OR to extend access (e.g. Admin can set email field to only show to Members, but member can decide to show it to Public visitors or to hide it altogether)

We moved to the roadmap for now because of other competing priorities, 

It is still our intention to address this, though it will be longer before we get to this than I originally hoped.  

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

I joined your comment to the main thread. You can vote on the wishlist in the same way as on the roadmap - though a detailed comment as you already wrote is even better than a vote. 

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

This would be truly helpful for us.  Our association is for licensed massage therapists who are, by law, required to post their license number in all "advertising" materials (which their directory listing on our web site is considered by the regulatory board).  They could, in theory, keep their name public and their license number private (if they keep everything private, it is not an issue).  Further, since we do occasionally support (or oppose) legislative efforts, transparency as to who is behind funding for causes is needed for us (in other words, we may need to require that a member name only be listed).  I don't want to force anyone to publicize contact information, but legally, if they post their name, their license number MUST be on it and we don't have control over that currently.  Thank you for considering this!

We just imported our existing 350 members and already this locking privacy issue is becoming a huge issue.

Our member search is set up to list members by order of membership level (the members paying most appear at the top of the list). However, if a member in a lower level chooses to hide the privacy in their membership level, they are automatically put at the top of the list in the search.

1- We need to lock the membership level privacy to always show so nobody changes it.

2- If we cannot do this, is there any other way we can ensure that the members show up in the correct order sorted by Membership Level (then by) Member since (then by) Member Last name. Members who opt to show in the directory should always come up in this order.

Thanks for your help on this immediate need and keeping the privacy locking issue at the forefront of development.