Curious why some CAF users hide their profile

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Tommy999

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Once in awhile I am curious about the religious affiliation of a poster on CAF and try to view the person’s user profile and sometimes it comes back with ‘User public profile is hidden’ or words to that effect.

Just curious why some folks choose to not show their religious affiliation on their CAF profile.

Note: I respect everyone’s right to privacy and their reluctance to share certain personal info.

Mainly just curious why on a religious forum like CAF that some would choose to conceal their faith tradition in the ‘Religion’ category.
Usually I am able to deduce a person’s religion anyway by their comments after a while but not always.

I’m not criticizing folks for not sharing their religious affiliation. Perhaps it’s just a personal choice and a privacy decision on their part and I totally respect that. Just trying to better understand the reasoning in case there’s more to it than that.
 
It’s not just religious affiliation that’s hidden when someone hides their profile. It prevents people from looking up others’ posts to flag them for no particular reason.
 
Got it. Makes sense. Thanks, JulianN. I figured there might be more to it than what I thought. I just didn’t know what those reasons were.
 
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JulianN said:
It prevents people from looking up others’ posts to flag them for no particular reason.
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It doesn’t work…it’s the same old people flagging the same old people…it World News, it a small group, and they find their flag targets easily.
 
When we hide our profile, unfortunately we don’t get to pick certain info like religious affiliation to show. You either hide everything or you hide nothing.

I’d be happy to show that I’m Roman Catholic on my profile, but I hid the profile for the same reason JulianN said, and it doesn’t give me an option to just show my religion.
 
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JulianN said:
It prevents people from looking up others’ posts to flag them for no particular reason.
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But it doesn’t. One can still find a member’s posts using the forum Search with advanced options (with @username).
 
Thanks for explaining. I didn’t realize so many people were flagging others on CAF, but then again my wife tells me I am a little too naive in general. I probably should’ve factored flagging others into the equation.
 
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I agree. And it doesn’t prevent people from flagging a particular post.
 
It’s not just flagging. Some people will follow you around the forum making derisive remarks about your other posts, or sending you weird PMs about your posts.
 
Although I keep my profile public, occasionally CAF gets some weirdo who harasses one or more member.
 
I personally do not engage or respond to users who hide their profile. Tis_Bearself is an exception though )
 
About three months ago I made my profile private because I would post something and someone who disagrees with me would look up my post history and quote me just to say “got you!” or “you are wrong!”

It was really petty and annoying so I make my profile private.
 
Thanks for the replies, everyone. After hearing about your unpleasant experiences, I can appreciate and better understand why you made your profiles private. Sorry that happened to you. Hopefully that hasn’t happened to you since you made them private.
 
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JulianN said:
It’s not just religious affiliation that’s hidden when someone hides their profile. It prevents people from looking up others’ posts to flag them for no particular reason.
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My thoughts are that some who do this for themselves, use the same technique to flag others who don’t hide theirs…flagging is out of control, with the claim of being offended feigned and used just to strike back at people they philosophically or politically disagree with.
 
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dscath said:
My thoughts are that some who do this for themselves, use the same technique to flag others who don’t hide theirs…flagging is out of control, with the claim of being offended feigned and used just to strike back at people they philosophically or politically disagree with.
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Perhaps. I’ve noticed that I’ve had posts flagged and removed that were clearly because someone disagreed with my position, not because there were actual violations of community guidelines.

I don’t really get it —in the many many years I’ve been here, I could probably count on one hand the number of flags I’ve given. And usually because I had a serious concern about the poster’s well-being.
 
dscath said:
…the claim of being offended feigned and used just to strike back at people they philosophically or politically disagree w
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Good point. I think this is indicative of the increased polarization (in general) of society.

Nowadays, some folks seem to have adopted more extreme and less tolerant positions towards other people with whom they disagree, resulting in the stance, “If you don’t see things my way, you’re not only wrong - you’re evil and must be silenced”.

It’s sad but yet another sign of the times, in my opinion.
 
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JulianN said:
I’ve noticed that I’ve had posts flagged and removed that were clearly because someone disagreed with my position, not because there were actual violations of community guidelines.
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If a post is removed and it doesn’t seem to be against TOS, then one can message moderation to see why it was removed. Often the moderator sees a violation of TOS where the original poster does not see one. Some of the TOS rules on civility or divisive topics are a subjective judgment call.
 
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The profile hiding is ineffective for preventing the stalking and tracking for flagging by the supposedly offended members who just want to lash out at people who do not share like opinions…my hunch is, if a member flags a post as offensive or uncharitable, the person owning the deleted or edited posts lashes out blindly at who they think “ratted” them out.

Its a mess.

Interestingly, if someone responds with a “quote” and then the original post is deleted, the quote remains as part of the thread in the responding post.

But, some get satisfaction in thinking they got a post taken down, unknowing that once its read, it may make them feel good, but the impact of the post never goes away.
 
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