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Proposal: Health

Many people prefer to keep their health issues private. As such, I imagine that many people will not want to have questions about their personal health linked to their Stackexchange accounts. Will there be an option to ask a question anonymously on the Health Stack, assuming it makes it to beta?

It seems like having such an option would encourage participation by long-time users of other SE sites.

P.S. I realize that there is always the option to create a new anonymous account.

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  • 1
    I'm not sure I follow, what's the distinction between asking a question anonymously and creating a new anonymous account?
    – JohnB
    Sep 30, 2014 at 18:00
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    The distinction is mostly one of ease of use. I am envisioning something like a checkbox near the 'submit question' button which sets the question to be anonymous (similar to the community wiki checkbox). Another difference is that the posted owner of the question would be some bogus account like the community moderator instead of just a low rep user.
    – Chris Mueller
    Sep 30, 2014 at 18:10
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    I think it would be a great feature to have.
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Oct 14, 2014 at 20:52
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    meta.stackexchange.com/q/130534/266359
    – Shokhet
    Dec 4, 2014 at 5:53
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    @FranckDernoncourt, Yes this is one significant area where SE loses Quora.
    – Pacerier
    Mar 28, 2015 at 14:22

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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If you do it online, it is not and can not be anonymous. Adding a method that implies anonymity would be inappropriate.

Given that a user has suitable education and resources, they may believe they can obtain a level of anonymity, but that is between them and their skills. In the US the governing source of relating to anonymity and medical information is HIPAA that level of security can not reasonably be expected on a Stack Exchange site.

No I can not see "ask a question anonymously?" being viable on the Health site.

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    I think it is suitable enough to allow users to hide their user details when asking a question, with a disclaimer that admins and those with higher privileges would still have access to IP and account information. While it's not complete anonymous, there may still be benefits with the function, as users may prefer that the less other regular users who know their personal details the better.
    – Kenshin
    Oct 2, 2014 at 9:03
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    Quora allows that, that doesn't mean it is a correct thing but still it can't be totally useless
    – Anurag Uniyal
    Dec 5, 2014 at 17:41
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    Also I don't think anybody is asking for perfect secrecy here, it is a human thing to not to do things in public, but no body dies if someone is exposed, just little embarrassment
    – Anurag Uniyal
    Dec 5, 2014 at 17:45
  • @James, It's not anonymous? Ok, tell me the name of the pereson who posted quora.com/… anonymously
    – Pacerier
    Mar 28, 2015 at 14:46

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