IDEA GATHERING: Allow admins to set all ideas to be posted anonymously

[BeccaMelhuish]

What is the problem?
For the Story of Estonia project (high priority and quick turnaround needed), we need to give admins the possibility to set the idea gathering so that ideas will be publicly anonymous.

Why is this a problem?
They want to ensure people are comfortable posting things which may be quite personal, so without their name being attached to it.

Possible solution.
This can be added to the idea gathering settings. (Perhaps hidden under an 'Advanced settings' accordion, along with #1754).

DUX @kevincrepin @TiinaDUX @Lidziya-p please provide a design for this in the settings and in the ideas (profile removed). Also, I'm thinking we may need to tell the participants that 'Your idea will be anonymous to everyone except topic admins' at some point when/before they post it, as when the admins download the ideas they will still see the username next to each one, and it seems only fair that they should know this.

[kevincrepin]

Can we do it so that the label is also indicating whether the setting is turned on or off?

Then for the actual ideas we should remove the name and profile photo of course.

Now we run into a fun problem with anonymous replies, because we can't show the name anymore of whom the reply is addressing :) The only thing I can come up with is to then use the time stamp to give people some hint of which post is being referred to.

Finally when adding your idea we can have the inline notification to clarify you're posting anonymously.

[BeccaMelhuish]

@kevincrepin thank you!

Re the labels, that's good except the copy which I'll cover in #1754 :)

Profile pic removed looks fine to me!

Hmm, hadn't considered that combination (anonymous with replies). I'm thinking that perhaps we don't allow anonymous reply threads as it's not really within the usual ethos of platform currently (i.e. that people should be openly named if they are engaging with each other online with the idea that this leads to more respectful discussions). In which case, it could be either:

1. If replies are anonymous, then reply threads are automatically turned off as well (and we explain this somehow)
2. If replies are anonymous, then anyone replying should be publicly named. However this then gets rather confusing with sometimes being anonymous and sometimes named (and maybe not knowing which interaction will be which) and in the reply threads replies would sometimes be to a name and sometimes to an idea with no name attached..

So I'm thinking option 1 would be simplest and perhaps most in line with our ethos currently. This might change at some point if we embrace anonymity more for valid reasons, but seems best for now. Will discuss with the team on Slack as well though :)

(Will share an idea while I have it though, in case we do decide to keep the threads. Perhaps each reply can be numbered in chronological order like we currently do with action posts (e.g. below), and then the replies can be to those instead of the names?)

Re the inline notification, this looks good to me but it seems like it squeezes the space for typing quite a lot, and for this use case in particular they'll be writing possibly quite long stories. It also feels like it takes up quite a lot of space long-term for something that only needs reading once (as presumably once they have posted it they'll remember, and they'll also see that any ideas already posted are anonymous to them). Don't have any other ideas though currently :D

[kevincrepin]

I updated it to already take into account if we do go down the road of anonymous replies:

And yes, good point. Maybe a more minimal indication like this would work:

[BeccaMelhuish]

I'm going to split out the anonymous reply threads into a new issue we can tackle later separately, but for now let's just have it so that if the admin makes ideas anonymous then we automatically switch off replies.

These are the texts I suggest for this section:

Anonymous ideas are turned ON/OFF
When posted anonymously, participants' usernames remain hidden publicly, visible only to admins via data export.

Idea replies are turned ON/OFF
Choose whether to allow participants to reply to ideas. Not available for anonymous ideas.

@kevincrepin When replies are enforced OFF, would you suggest just greying out the toggle button, and leaving the rest of it black?

I will move this to 'ready for dev' already as though, so the backend work can be underway :)

[BeccaMelhuish]

Dev task summary:

To be fixed in parallel with #1754

---

• Add making replies anonymous in the settings as per this design and with this text below. Label text should change from ON to OFF with the movement of the toggle button.

Anonymous ideas are turned ON (OFF)
When posted anonymously, participants' usernames remain hidden publicly, visible only to admins via data export.

---

• Add 'You are posting anonymously' label to 'Add your idea' window, as per this design, and with the following hover tooltip text:

Anonymous ideas
Anonymous ideas are switched on for this topic. Your username won’t be publicly displayed on your idea. It will only be visible to topic admins if they export the idea data.

---

• Make it so that the default is that anonymous ideas are OFF unless the admin changes it

• Make sure that once an idea has been added to an idea gathering, it is not possible to change the setting to make usernames visible. The toggle should be greyed out.

• Once the backend work for IDEA GATHERING: Allow admins to disable replies on ideas #1754 is done, make it so that toggling the anonymous replies to ON automatically toggles the replies to OFF, and greys out the replies toggle button (unless @kevincrepin suggests it should be otherwise).

[kevincrepin]

Sounds good to me 👍

[ilmartyrk]

Estimate 24h

API:

• Add setting field to DB, remove userId constraint from Idea
• Update API ideation creating endpoint to include the setting field
• Do not include this field in update endpoint
• Create TEST-s for functionality

FE:

• Add option to ideation settings as per design
• Update idea forms
• Update idea-box and idea view to exclude user info

[ilmartyrk]

@kevincrepin @BeccaMelhuish I have quite big UX issue that we haven't discussed. It is related to editing and deleting ideas and idea attachments. I currently solved it on the API side by allowing users to edit and delete the ideas and their attachments during the current login session, but not sure if and how to solve it on the UI side.

[kevincrepin]

I think the problem is how to find your idea if you want to edit it, right?

Could it be as simple as showing your idea in the default manner (with your name visible), but ideas that aren't yours without the name?

[BeccaMelhuish]

@kevincrepin I just checked with @ilmartyrk and actually the plan is that this will be 100% anonymous, even 'behind the scenes' in the database. So in which case there would be no way to identify which is the user's idea at all (I'd been thinking the 'Your ideas' filter for example would work, but not the case).

So in this case, two options come to mind:

1. No possibility to edit or delete anonymous ideas. Once it's posted it's posted. We would have to communicate this to the user, when they go to share it, presumably via an 'Are you sure?'. Given that we have drafts, this could be fairly OK for the user - they can keep editing in draft until they're really sure. A bit like submitting a form - you can't edit once submitted. The idea could still be moderated by an admin through the usual flow, but the user would have no chance to edit their idea before/after it gets moderated, nor even know if it has been moderated (as they won't receive a notification).

Or:

2. Edit only while still in same session (until logged out). Like Ilmar has proposed with his current solution from the API side, until a user has logged out (or been logged out), they are still able to edit their idea. But after that, not. This seems more complicated to me in terms of the UX/UI and communication. And also I guess more complicated development-wise as a result? Presumably the moderation would be same as the above - the admin could always moderate, but the rest of the moderation flow wouldn't work (even while still logged in, else it gets super complex).

In both cases we'd need to remove the 'Your ideas' option from the filter.

@kevincrepin Any thoughts on this from UX/UI perspective? :)

[kevincrepin]

Nr 1 has my preference. I agree with nr 2 we would need to make that really clear as to why they can't edit anymore because they had logged out.

[BeccaMelhuish]

OK grand, thank you @kevincrepin! I agree 1 seems simplest all round :)

So in that case I'll propose some text for a pop-up to make sure users are aware of this before they post:

---

Are you sure?

Remember, anonymous ideas can't be edited or deleted after they're posted. Once it's posted, it's permanent!

Keep editing
Save as draft
Add my idea

---

The 'Add my idea' could be a button (main CTA), but the other two just links?

[BeccaMelhuish]

Ilmar to keep the code developed just in case.