As some of you have already gathered, I'm developing a Drupal distribution for church websites.
One of the early decisions I would like to make is whether to require users of church websites to use their real name. I feel usernames give a false sense of being anonymous and have a tendency to encourages internet flame wars or otherwise cause people to act less composed then when they use their real names. In addition, church websites should be extensions of their physical communities and real names help easily associate virtual users with their physical counterpart.
For this reason, I'm considering using the RealName module and the Email Registration module to enable this functionality in the church distro.
This would make the church websites function similar to Facebook with login using email and post displaying the users real name.
What do you think of this direction?
Comments
I suggest you think very
I suggest you think very carefully about the realname module and gathering personal info of any kind on the web.
The problem is security. If you are an expert, and have confidence you can maintain security of the site then you can do those kinds of things.
If you are allowing other people to admin or partially admin you should embrace modules that do not disclose or present people for real. You can provide abiliity for linking into facebook, twitter or something along those lines if they want to divulge more personal information. That way you will not be responsible for abuses, and believe me you read and view abuses on all the social sites daily.
In churches, it won't take long for the people to know among themselves who nicknames relate.
IMO, of course. I won't even use an HTTPS and process my own credit cards (cheaper) any longer on my sites for payments, donations,etc. I don't want the security responsibilities. I therefore use Paypal and Google Checkouts,etc. Let the people that get the credit card information be responsible for sensitive personal information. On some of my sites I do retain billing and ship to information, but I keep no financial information on the sites.
In plain words... do not expose yourself or the church to any liability that isn't 100% a necessity. If the church wants to do things you are not comfortable to do, don't do them or if you do make sure you have the church have sign a letter accepting all responsibility. Usually, you don't have to go that far.
People just don't understand how creative the crooks, hackers, crackers and other mal-contents can be.
Have faith, trust in God... but use common sense. LOL
recommend but not require IMO
IMO this might be something to recommend but not to require.
There may also be a number of cases where site owners would prefer to set up usernames more as functional logins, rather than a particular person's name anyway. Yes, that has it's own issues of potentially sharing logins, etc, but generally my feeling would be not to require real names.
Besides, it's not like the real names module can really enforce that people put their 'real names' into the full name fields on their profiles.
Anyway, give each church the choice on things like this...
jeff
logintoboggan
See the logintoboggan module, it lets you login with just your email, too, along with numerous other improvements.
For our department, we just make people's real names the username. Doesn't require the realname module. Usernames can have spaces in them.
I'm working on a new church site with some social networking features and groups, perhaps we can collaborate. I'm trying to whip up something quick though, and borrow stuff I did for 'department 2.0', another custom drupal distro I'm releasing soon.
logintoboggan is handy, but I
logintoboggan is handy, but I think it offers too many settings for drupal newbies. I use the RealName module because it allows me to hide the users real names from anonymous visitors.
I would appreciate the help on the distro. I'm trying to figure out a good way to share and maintain Feature exports. I'm working on a website that allows drupal users to create a project page for Feature exports with an issue tracker like drupal.org, but contributing to the project will rely on FileField uploads rather than CVS.
Then we can have features for Organic Group ministries, Sermon Podcasts, Church Directory, photo gallery, and WYSIWIG. Everything needed for an out of the box experience.