A members-only but anonymous discussion board?

July 11, 2005 2:34 PM

I'm in search of an electronic discussion board that meets a couple criteria. The idea is to create a neutral space where members of a group I belong to can post about a very contentious labor issue. They've made two requests: 1) members should have the option of posting anonymously or not, and 2) the forum should be available to members only (password protected).

While I'm fairly Internet-savvy, I'm certainly not capable of building a site like that. Does anyone know of a hosting service that provides these two options? Most I've checked out -- Google and Yahoo, for example -- do not allow members to post anonymously once they've logged in.

posted by miriam to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

I recently built a wiki using Instiki, which includes a web server for your own machine and was very easy to set up. I knew nothing about how to do it but I managed just fine and I am not at all tech-savvy.

Since I have DSL and a dynamic IP, I got an IP update tool which auto-syncs a URL to my IP adress from no-ip. They also gave me a domain name but if you have your own you can use that too.

So far it's working out well (I did this last week). Instiki is absurdly simple if fairly low on features - it does give you an anonymous editing option. The DNS stuff is all good. I password protected the thing.

I'm not saying this is the best thing for your needs, but it is an idea.
posted by mai at 2:42 PM on July 11, 2005

I would suggest setting up phpbb and password protecting its root directory. If you don't have a web host already, you'll need to find one that will let your php and give you mysql access (pretty easy to find for cheap).

If you're trying to do this for free, I don't really have any good ideas.
posted by subclub at 2:53 PM on July 11, 2005

I suppose it depends by what they/you mean in the word "anonymous." If it's in name only, you could setup pretty much any board software on a host and promise to /dev/null the logs while .htaccess'ing the directory. This basically equates to the site admin promising not too look - not anonymous in anyone that seriously values their privacy.

If they want something that is beginning to boarder on anonymous you could setup a server as above and suggest that they use Tor.

If you want to require that it was anonymous then you could setup a Tor hidden service, this would make it impossible for you to know who was connecting and likewise, for them to know where the server is.

All these solutions require you hosting (or paying to host) this somewhere. Always remember, privacy and anonymity on the internet is very relative and often scaled backwards in the future. In other words, over shoot and cross your fingers.
posted by sled at 5:20 PM on July 11, 2005

Response by poster: Thanks for the help! As I sort through your suggestions I thought I'd supply the extra information that, no, unfortunately there's no money to pay for this, and that I suspect that the members of this group are concerned about anonymity on a fairly basic level. So I think it would probably enough that their posts don't appear next to their names; the nitty-gritty of IP addresses, etc., is probably beyond most of our understanding anyway, since we're grad students and not hackers.

It's probably okay for I (or whoever administrates the board) to be able to see behind the mask of anonymity. Since we all know each other and we're supposed to be acting like adults (hah!), an administrator's vow of secrecy would likely suffice.
posted by miriam at 9:36 PM on July 11, 2005

Best answer: Miriam - it's not too hard.

'True anonymity' might cost $10/month, but the pseudo you are looking for is probably free. If you have DSL/cable, it's very easy, if you have dialup it's not too hard.

Sign up for a dynamic IP service (goggle) and setup an phpbb httpd service with .htaccess protecting the directory (also google). This will get you pretty far in what you're looking for.

If it's an after work thing, dialup up, or connect up after work and say that the BB system will be up 5-10pm local time. It can connect to your local server and promise to shift all idenitifying bytes to no-knowledge ( >> /dev/null or no-look delete httpd-accesss-log).

Nonetheless, good luck with what you're trying to do. I commend you. Best in the change and hope it's for good. Email me if you need further help.
posted by sled at 8:21 PM on July 12, 2005