As someone who always sets "invisible mode" off on forums, I can say
it can be slightly creepy to have someone say "Oh, you're sending a
private message, I wonder who it's to?" or "I wondered when you'd get
around to reading that thread" on IRC or wherever. Given the number
of privacy-lovers you get in the open-source community, I suspect
you'll see fairly strong backlash if you make it opt-out rather than
opt-in, and don't at least make a checkbox or something to set the
preference right from the edit window.
Personally, I would put more stress on the message box and less on the
names. Make the name-showing opt-in, not opt-out (with those who fail
to opt in being billed as "invisible users" or something); messages
should be sendable even without logging in or showing your name.
On 8/25/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra(a)baylink.com> wrote:
Are we *ever* going to get a way to edit ledes without
having to lock
the whole page?
The edit-conflict resolver doesn't care whether you're editing the
page or a section. If the two edits are to different lines, they're
merged; if they're to the same line, they conflict. (There may be
some more details that I don't know of, but that's the gist of it.)
Edit conflicts occur most frequently on busy RFAs or talk pages
because everyone's editing the same line, namely the one below where
the last guy left his comment.