A tripcode is a hash used to confirm the identity of a user on a message board or other form of discussion where user account registration is not possible or not required. Basically, you enter a password, and the system creates a hash from that password and displays the hash next to your username (if you have one) when you post. If you post again and use the same password, the same hash will be presented, making it (theoretically) impossible for someone else to impersonate you even though they also are anonymous. Check out the Wikipedia article for more information.
Implementation will likely be fairly simple. Just attach a submission function on the comment submission form which will check the submitted name field for trip passes. If found, the tripcodes are calculated and the name field is altered before it is stored in the database. I already have some PHP code somewhere around here which does standard and secure tripcode calculation, if someone else decides they'd like to tackle this - though it will likely require some clean-up, since I was still fairly n00bish when I wrote it.
This could be helpful for discussion-heavy blogs and such which don't allow registration for comments - once the commenters are trained how to use them, anyway.
Comments
Could use this
I need something like this for a client site that has trained its visitors to remain anonymous. I threw together a module that assigns each user a name when posting a comment. Discussions became kind of meaningless with everyone posting as Guest and referring to each other by time posted. The name is stored in a cookie. But it doesn't prevent users from impersonating each other. However, these users are pretty lazy and would probably not bother to enter a pass. For my use it might work better simply to allow only unique names and have them expire if not used within a week or so.
However, these users are
The autofill feature that many browsers use nowadays can help here; they enter it once, and the browser remembers it for next time. There's still the matter of teaching users to enter it once, however - the hard part about all this is not so much the implementation as it is training users what tripcodes are and how to use them both in terms of posting and following threads.
The Boise Drupal Guy!
I like this
I allow anonymous posting on my forum to encourage people to post that might otherwise not because of the perceived hassle of setting up an account. Something like this that tied all the posts to a user would be great. What I'd really like to see as well is the ability to convert the "unique anonymous user" into an actual user and have all the posts convert as well.
Just throwing out the idea and my +1 on the the module idea. I'm afraid I don't have time to get into this more than as a cheerleader and potential user. :)
Michelle
Any updates here?
I think such a module would be very useful; I don’t think there is one already.
Sorry, I never built it -
Sorry, I never built it - sort of a lack of interest, both on my and others' behalf. =/
The Boise Drupal Guy!