Read receipts on discussion items reveal identity for anonymous posts
closed
Iris Hou
closed
Duong Nguyen
planned
Eric Huber
Duong Nguyen: Hi, has this been resolved definitively?
Eric Huber
In a Comments chat thread on a post, it looks like it does show a read receipt with a revealed student name who had previously only posted as anonymous on that item.
Eric Huber
To clarify: If someone posts a question anonymously and then goes to view the Comments thread on their own post, it does not put them into ninja mode automatically. So when they click into the Comments thread, it's going to (at least briefly) deanonymize them through a read receipt to others. Clicking the ninja icon after that does seem to change the read receipt that others see, to show the "anonymous" name instead. However, in the browser console, the log of events shows a consistent user ID between the anonymous and non-anonymous view events. It's the same ID that the user has on other posts where they aren't posting anonymously too, so that's another way to cross-reference and deanonymize potentially.
Eric Huber
After some more experimentation, it looks like students may not see each other's anonymous and non-anonymous IDs on the same event, but it's strongly corroborated with the various event pings being received, which have the non-anonymous ID.
Tade Oyerinde
Hi James Tompkin -- hmm. So anyone who reads a post will be shown in the read receipts (including the author of the post, if they come back and read it after you sent a message).
Is this what you mean by their identity being revealed?
We're about to ship anonymous messaging next week so this shouldn't be an issue, but just looking for clarification!
Thanks
James Tompkin
Tade Oyerinde: Yes, that's exactly it. The author's name (originally anonymous) is revealed when they read a discussion reply. e.g., student x posts a question which is anonymous. I reply as an instructor, and then I see that 'Qian' has read my reply, and so deduce that this must be the author of the original question.
Tade Oyerinde
James Tompkin: Right, right. We definitely need to make this clearer but that deduction isn't really valid, unless the class is super small. In the described scenario 'Qian' is just someone who clicked on the post and read your reply. He may or may not be the author of the question (we will sho the names of the first 5 people to read that reply). Make sense?
- This definitely needs to be made clearer and won't be an issue once we've shipped anonymous messages.
James Tompkin
Tade Oyerinde: I'm glad it's going to be fixed; that's great. Thanks!
Neal Terrell
Tade Oyerinde: This is an issue when an anonymous post is made to only the instructor/TAs; the original author is the only student who can see the post in the first place, so their name in the read-receipt reveals who made the post.
Tade Oyerinde
Neal Terrell: Good catch -- working on a fix now!