As someone who always sets "invisible mode" off on forums, I can say it can be slightly creepy to have someone say "Oh, you're sending a private message, I wonder who it's to?" or "I wondered when you'd get around to reading that thread" on IRC or wherever. Given the number of privacy-lovers you get in the open-source community, I suspect you'll see fairly strong backlash if you make it opt-out rather than opt-in, and don't at least make a checkbox or something to set the preference right from the edit window.
Personally, I would put more stress on the message box and less on the names. Make the name-showing opt-in, not opt-out (with those who fail to opt in being billed as "invisible users" or something); messages should be sendable even without logging in or showing your name.
On 8/25/06, Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com wrote:
Are we *ever* going to get a way to edit ledes without having to lock the whole page?
The edit-conflict resolver doesn't care whether you're editing the page or a section. If the two edits are to different lines, they're merged; if they're to the same line, they conflict. (There may be some more details that I don't know of, but that's the gist of it.) Edit conflicts occur most frequently on busy RFAs or talk pages because everyone's editing the same line, namely the one below where the last guy left his comment.