Anonymous Submissions & Hidden Profiles
There are three types of anonymous settings in IdeaScale software. The settings are for the participant and moderator views of activity; Community administrators do have access to the user data and identities within the application.
Why Anonymity:
- Anonymity tools are meant for moderators, judges, and reviewers to give impartial evaluation and moderation of ideas and solutions submitted by participants.
- Anonymity allows members to comment or submit openly without any inhibitions, without fear of retribution, or to avoid experiencing real or perceived discrimination due to their age, gender, race, role in the organization, or other factors that could be biased.
There are three types of anonymity available in the communities:
- Hide My Identity: is enabled by Community administrators at the community level. This hides the profiles of participants in every campaign within a community.
- Participants can choose to hide their own identity when enabled from Workspace Personal settings .
- Admins can choose to enable this feature to give all community participants the option to have a hidden identity.
- Force Absolute Anonymity: gives Community administrators complete control over the entire community and all members. When enabled, it hides the identities of all members and they cannot opt-out of it like they can with the Hide my Identity option.
- Anonymous Submissions and Comments: are options set by Community admins at the community level and available to be switched on or off within campaigns.
- Members can choose to submit their ideas or comments anonymously if the setting is available.
- Community admins can choose to Force Community-wide Anonymity.
NOTE: When using any type of anonymity, the username will show as “Community Member.”
Hide My Identity
This option can be enabled from Community Settings >> Customization >> Customize Site Behavior. It gives the member control to choose if they want to hide their identity or not from Workspace Personal settings >> Your Communities >> More (3 dots) link >> Hide identity.
Note: The checkbox for Hide Identity will only be available if it is enabled at the community level. If the option is not available, it means that it is not enabled.
With IdeaScale, members have the ability to hide their avatar picture, first name, and last name from other users (email address is always hidden by default).
Disabling this feature will remove all members' ability within the community to hide their identities and reveal their names and avatars on all ideas, comments, votes, and community activities where they were previously hidden.
Force Community-Wide Anonymity
It can be enabled from Community Settings >> Customization >> Customize Site Behavior. This feature allows the community admin control over the entire community and all members. Enabling it will hide all member's identities. A member cannot opt-out of it like the Hide my Identity feature. Disabling the feature will reveal the members' names/avatars on all ideas, comments, votes, and community activities again.
Help Article on Hiding Your Identity/Anonymous Posts
Below are examples of what various parts of the application will look like when Hide My Identity is enabled.
1. Submit Ideas: Idea submitter's name will be hidden.
2. Submit Comments: Commenter's name will be hidden.
3. Leaderboard: If members hide their identities, their names will not be seen on the Leaderboard. 
4. Campaign Sponsor: The owner name of the campaign will be hidden if the campaign owner hides the identity.
5. Moderate an Idea: Moderators can evaluate the Ideas anonymously.
6. Submit Vote: Members can submit votes anonymously in the ideas.
7. Refine Idea: Members can answer and edit the answer to refinement questions anonymously.
8. Join a team: Members can join an Idea team anonymously.
9. Fund an Idea: Members can contribute some funds anonymously to an Idea.
10. Assess idea: Members can assess anonymously in an Idea.
Submitting Anonymously
Community admins can enable this option to allow members to submit anonymously on the campaign level from Community Settings >> Campaigns >> Edit campaign >> Basic Information >> Privacy & Access. It can be set up independently on individual campaigns, allowing the admin to set it as required.
It can be enabled for 2 actions:
1. Idea Submissions
2. Comments on Ideas
Once an idea is submitted anonymously, neither the idea owner nor anyone else can edit the idea to reveal the name of the idea submitter. However, if the "private idea submission" setting is turned off for that campaign, the submitter's name will be displayed. Such ideas and comments will also NOT be counted in the member's idea/comment statistics. The member's avatar picture, first name, and last name from other users (email address by default is always hidden) will be hidden.
Help article on private ideas
Help article on Anonymous Ideas and Comment Submission