… and I’m trying to get where is it coming from as, in parallel, more and more individuals expose their private life in the so-called “social” networks. So, few thoughts I have on this topic :
As a forumer who sometimes try to answer to issues reported, I see already minimal or erratic ways to explain them : the profile often helps (or, at least, should) in this context.
We are all supposed to form a “community”. What kind of community is it supposed to be, with more and more doors and shutters closed, “just in case” ?
Additionaly, I’m wondering what essential information could be stolen from these forums profiles, which could constitute a threat for a given user, unless she/he is deliberately showing some sensible informations.
Overall, the evolution puts me less and less at ease, I must say. So, I would like to get thoughts about it - hopefully, they could make me think twice on the subject.
Good point @cubic13 . I was asking myself the same question lately. The profile information can be adjusted to taste. So I guess it must be about stats and related content.
Is it possible that profiles are hidden by default, or inadvertantly? I know mine was hidden until someone pointed it out and showed me how to unhide it. I still can’t find where that setting is!
@Reco29
I guess that you are right : indeed, maybe the stats and activity reports are frightening some…
So, maybe a solution would be to be able to hide only these, but this would be an acceptable solution only if each and everyone would take the time to fill the profile informations that could be useful for other forumers. Until now, it’s been far from the case…
Hi @cubic13 ,
I agree. Maybe it would be helpful if the About Me part of the profile could be excluded from the Hide Public Profile option. This way the User decides what sort of information he/she is willing to share. However, I’m afraid that this might not be possible due to discourse’s design. I don’t know to which degree Steinberg can modify this section within discourse. In general, it would be much helpful if the About Me section of the profile provided a dedicated field for specs.
While we’re at: it occurs on a regular basis that an OP feels offended that someone proposes a rather simple solution implying that the OP might as well be a rookie. Not sure how to handle this one, though. I for myself couldn’t care less as I consider myself a life long learner and sometimes its the simple things that points you in the right direction. However, others might appreciate a dedicated field in the profile like beginner/advanced/expert. I’d rather not have it there, maybe a hint in the forum guide would be sufficient that this info could be placed at the top of a thread along with specs. Of course, the latter info is much more important.
Probably the more efficient solution, with the Location item. Still wondering what could be so frightening about the stats, though…
It’s not manageable, I think, unless the OP give us clear informations about it. I gave up wondering about it, as we cannot even rely on the different ‘trust’ categories : I have seen more than one time ‘Basic’ users that were writing as if they were as informed and aware of DAW usage as ‘regular’ ones.
Yep, a dedicated profile item about this, why not ? But I’m afraid that biases will quickly arise, making it useless. But yes, worth a try, if possible.
I took the chance to check my setting, and it was set to “hide”.
However, I do not remember having set it to “hide” earlier.
My memory might be wrong, but makes sense that everyone check their settings to avoid that we talk about strange temporary defaults or an accidental settings mass update on this one.
As a matter of fact, if I had not searched for that option in my preferences I would not have known if my profile was hidden or not, too.
Thanks for chiming in @Northunder !
Maybe it is easiest to simply point out to fellow members that their public profile is hidden? Although this has a somehow unpleasant aftertaste of forum police. Not sure if I’d be comfortable with that. If it were an active choice - well, I would definetly not be trying to convince anybody otherwise. That’d be none of my business. Hmmm
It’s definitely useful to see what OS and product version someone uses. @Steve has a little video on how to put that into your profile here, but perhaps information could be added there about how to check that your profile is not hidden.
Neither do I (but that could be just me … last week is a bit foggy already ).
Great idea, @MrSoundman. Actually, I recently added my Cubase version and OS there (in order to show it to others here), not knowing that my profile was hidden.
OK. What i’m wondering about is to which extent a Preferences > Interface > Hide my public profile setting could be an explanation of the trend I was talking about, at first place.
On my end, it has always been UNticked as default, this, since using the Discourse version of our forums. But maybe one of its update has changed changed this, without warning. So, it would be helpful to have either @Ben_at_Steinberg or @steve advice/enlightment about the issue.
Private accounts (not just here, but generally) are usually accounts where the holder is keeping their interactive history secret - eg on this forum that would be topics started, replies to posts, badges earned, likes given and received and so on. One wonders what it is they are hiding.
Here, and again, as elsewhere, no one should be displaying any identifiable personal details whatsoever, that’s a basic given, I would imagine. Pros may display business details, which publicly available anyway.
I understand you.
However, my doubt rather is, that I am not sure, whether a major part of those user really have set theirs to “hidden” or whether something bad happened during a former forum upgrade, not affecting ALL users…
).