I’d just like to suggest using different string variables for the forum and the username used to log into the site in the first place, the courses and to allow them to be changed/manipulated independently of each other.
If I share a badge from one of the courses in social medias I might want to use one nick there, if I want to make a posts on the forum I might like to use another identity there.
And I might want to use a third username that’s easy to remember to actually log in.
Each of these could be different even though you could use the same ones as default behaviour for those that prefer that or who haven’t found the setting to change it yet.
A slightly different topic but it would also be nice if you’d leave the names as invisible by default in the forums making showing them to others optional, don’t mean that they can’t be visible to moderators, but people sometimes want to have a disconnect between one or more of their online selves and one or more of the fronts they put up when dealing with others in the physical world for good reasons.
You behave differently when dealing with say your mother-in-law then you do with your special one, and you might behave differently with him/her then you do with your friends, and differently around them in turn then your boss.
How much difference there is varies from person to person but there generally is one.
And online our nick and avatar is kind of the mask we use to present ourselves while in the physical world it’s our clothing, name, behaviour/mannerism and so one and so forth.
I simply personally feel that it should be peoples own choice how they present themselves to others in a given situation with certain people.
Allowing us to choose what information we present (or choose not to present) to other users is a part of that.
What do you guys and gals think?
I think I understand what you are saying, different platforms, different personas and I agree with that. I don’t consider Codecademy and their forums to be different though. I think that who you are there is who you should be here.
It is a bit awkward that you have to go there to make changes here, it would be better if when you made changes here that they appeared there too. That would be my feature suggestion.
1 Like
Would you be so kind as to rephrase your post please?
I’m not quite sure what you’re saying and a rephrasing might make it clearer to me.
After all you and I might read your sentence in different ways due to our differences in logic.
Anyway, personally I consider this different from my physical world simply by being online in the first place.
That makes it available to google for instance, and even if you guys made this site invisible to googles crawlers any comments made about this site elsewhere would be available to google.
I’ve made it quite clear to those I know and care about that I prefer them not to share content about me online, for instance on facebook (and as a result I’m probably one of the people with the least information there shared by others)
And I’m not sure why you have to use your name here in public.
That you want accountability is fair enough by all means, but that would be achievable with the name just being available to the moderation team to limiting its visibility to the user-base at large.
So what’s the justification for the “always visible” name policy here?
Anyway, “Domaldel” is the nick I like to use when dealing with people in a casual context and one that isn’t totally separated from my everyday life (so for instance if you search the nick on google you will find some references to my name) but I’ve been trying to keep that low still and would have preferred to keep my name private here as well.
Everything searchable on google can also be available to others who lack the context to judge it correctly.
For instance let’s say that a future potential boss searches my name online and finds that I said something that he or she views as plain stupid on here.
It could potentially cause me to lose that job opportunity.
In that context I’d rather be able to present what I’ve actually done to them so I can be judged by merits instead of being judged by say a flawed assumption that I made in a question on here.
By forcing exposure of my name you’re in essence reducing my chances of freely expressing myself, for instance asking questions that might seem foolish.
You’re forcing me to second guess every word I say on here.
I don’t think that’s a healthy policy.
However if my name wasn’t directly connected to my account on here the future boss would actually have to know me well enough to know that I’m one of the main users of this nick online and search for that nick to see what I’ve written here.
A situation where said boss probably already have employed me and know my way of thinking.
Do you get my meaning?
Let’s just look at one point first,
If you clear the Name field in your https://www.codecademy.com/account settings then your name will not appear in public.
1 Like
Thanks…
And I guess that’s one of those stupid assumptions I’ve made online… ><
I made this topic late at night last night and have slept very, very little since then…
I falsely assumed that having a name registered was a requirement to keep having an account on here…
Thanks for correcting me and for showing me that in this case my concern above is kind of moot.
I’d still prefer it if you’d inform people at account creation that A) there’s a forum for this website (I didn’t know till I discovered it by accident yesterday after using the site for quite a while) and B) that inserting my name here makes the name publicly available on said forum.
And it wouldn’t hurt to also highlight that it is optional to have a name filled into that field so idiots like me won’t go around thinking it’s mandatory… ><
1 Like
Those sounds like good suggestions. The Admins appreciate having your feedback.
These forums are still quite new for us. They are running on this open-source platform http://www.discourse.org/. They push new releases several times a year so things will always be changing.
Thanks. =)
I was wondering what platform you where using for your forums.
I’d actually like to try to make a forum with it myself one of these days.
And yeah, that sounds good. =)