Why can't we use mentions on partially-anonymous discussions?

[EzraMorrison]

re:https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Student-Guide/How-do-I-mention-a-user-in-a-discussion-reply-as-a-....

Why can't we use mentions on partially-anonymous discussions?

At most, there should be a warning to the message writer reminding them that the discussion is partially anonymous and asking them to confirm that they want to use a mention.

Am I missing something?

PS - after asking this question I ranked up enough to also post this topic on the Ideas forum: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Ideas/Allow-mentions-on-partially-anonymous-discussions/id.... Sorry for the cross-post!

[NoahBoswell · Accepted solution]

Hi there @EzraMorrison ,

Anytime there is anonymous information in a discussion, regardless of the details, since there are still details that are labeled as "anonymous", Canvas will consider it to be an anonymous discussion, still. That said, you still can't mention other people in the course, because anonymous restrictions still apply. These settings are controlled by the instructor in the settings. It needs to be set to OFF in order for mentions to work appropriately. 

I hope this helps.

Be well,
Noah

[EzraMorrison]

Thanks for the reply @NoahBoswell! I guess I'm wondering why Canvas hasn't separated the setting for whether mentions are allowed from the setting controlling whether discussion posts can/must be anonymous. It seems to me that those are two separate features, and the instructor (me, in this case) should be able to control them separately - especially when I set discussion to be "partially" (optionally) anonymous posts. As a concrete example, I have a "general questions" discussion in my course where I invite students to post their questions. I want that discussion to be optionally anonymous in case students are feeling nervous about their questions, but if they do post non-anonymously, I would like to "mention" them in my reply, so that they are more likely to get a notification about my reply (depending on their notification settings).