[ARCHIVED] Hiding Originator of a Discussion

[csmith1]

As an instructional designer, I create new discussions for the SMEs in their courses. When I do that, my name and profile picture show up as the originator of the discussion. Has anyone found a way to hide that besides masquerading as the instructor and creating the discussion on their behalf? I would understand the need to show the profile info. of the person who posted to the discussion, but not necessarily of the one who created the topic.

[kona]

Deactivated user​, I think what many people do to get around this is build in a sandbox course and then copy it over to the real course. I'm pretty sure by doing this the discussion originator is stripped out.

[MattHanes]

Awesome, that's a great workaround!

[kona]

I take no credit for it! I picked up from the Instructional Designers​ group. Possibly from  @Chris_Hofer ​? I know he's talked about doing this before with master courses.

[Chris_Hofer]

You're correct,  @kona ​.  We have "master" courses where we build content for our faculty and adjuncts.  When we create discussion topics in these "master" courses, our names and profile pictures are displayed at the top.  We also enroll specific faculty into these "master" courses for each program.  When we are done with the course build, we let the instructor import content from these "master" courses to their own courses.  Our names/profile pictures do not carry over into their courses after the course import.

You can see a similar question that was recently asked here: Anonymous Discussion Creation

There's also these Feature Ideas:

(now archived)

[kona]

Thanks  @Chris_Hofer ! That is very helpful!!

[MattHanes]

I don't think there is a way to do this without Masquerading as the user.

However, one option to prevent your particular name from showing up is to create a user that is only used for this purpose. Then you can name that new user something like "Discussion Creation Robot" so the users know that the creator of the discussion is not taking part in the discussion.