Anonymous Posting

Let members post topics and replies without showing their name or avatar to other members, with an audited admin-only reveal.

PRO - This feature requires Jetonomy Pro.

What You Will Learn

  • How to enable Anonymous Posting site-wide and allow it in individual spaces
  • What members see when they post or reply anonymously
  • Why the real author is still tracked behind the scenes
  • How administrators reveal the real author, and how every reveal is logged
  • How to use the REST API reveal endpoint

Why Anonymous Posting Matters

Some conversations only happen if the poster's name is hidden - a support question about a sensitive personal issue, honest feedback about a manager, or a first post in a topic the member is nervous about. Anonymous Posting lets you open that door in the spaces where it fits, while keeping every anonymous author accountable behind the scenes.

Enabling Anonymous Posting

Anonymous posting needs two switches, both on. It never appears with only one of them set.

  1. Site-wide: Go to Jetonomy → Extensions, find Anonymous Posting, and click Enable. This is the global master switch - there is no separate settings screen for it.
  2. Per space: Open the space, go to Edit → Anonymous, tick Allow anonymous posts in this space, and save.

Turn the space option on only where it fits - a support, feedback, or sensitive-topics space, for example. Leave it off everywhere else. A space where the option is off never shows the anonymous controls, even while the extension is enabled globally.

What Members See

In a space that allows it, members get:

  • New topic: a Post anonymously checkbox in the composer fields.
  • Reply: a compact anonymity toggle (mask icon) in the reply toolbar, which highlights when active.

When a member submits with either one on, their post or reply shows as Anonymous to everyone else - in the feed, on the topic, in replies, in search, in the RSS feed, in notifications, on profiles, and in the mobile app. It uses the same author-resolution path everywhere, so no surface can leak the real name by accident.

Server-Side Enforcement

The anonymity flag is never trusted from the client alone. Every post and reply create request is re-validated server-side against both gates (the global switch and the space opt-in) before it is allowed to save as anonymous - so a member cannot force anonymity in a space that has not opted in, even by editing the request.

Revealing the Real Author

Only site administrators can reveal who is behind an anonymous post or reply - space moderators cannot. An admin uses the Reveal author button on the post or reply. The real name is shown only for that explicit action; ordinary admin browsing still shows "Anonymous."

Every reveal is written to the activity log, recording who revealed it, which item, and when - so reveals stay accountable. Use this sparingly, for abuse investigations rather than routine browsing.

REST API

Anonymous Posting registers this endpoint under jetonomy/v1:

Method Endpoint Description
POST /anonymous/reveal Reveal the real author of an anonymous post or reply

POST /anonymous/reveal - body

{
  "object_type": "post",
  "object_id": 128
}

object_type is post or reply. The route requires the manage_options capability (administrators by default) and returns 403 if the caller lacks it, or 404 if the object is not actually anonymous. A successful call returns the real author's id and name and writes the reveal to the activity log. See the REST API reference for full payloads.

Related

What's Next?

Let members attach images, PDFs, and documents to topics and replies.

File Attachments →