Hello! Gary from Spirit Lake had a great idea that I would also really like, so I’m posting the suggestion - is it possible to make it so someone can personally toggle whether or not they see handles on channels?
I don’t mean game-wide, just a setting, like switching on color or muting a channel, the ability to mute handles so they aren’t visible for you personally.
PS: I am really liking Ares so far, though!
Thanks for the suggestion! I will think about it for sure. Can you help me understand why you don’t want to see the handles? Is it just a space issue?
One is a space/cluttered screen issue. Another thing is that community-wise, and this sounds terrible but, I really don’t know/care what someone’s handle is? I tend to care more about the character than the player, awful person that I am. If I am curious, I can look them up in the directory (Or toggle things back on if that’s made available!)
But I do not have very many or deep, lasting OOC relationships with much of the people around (everyone’s wonderful, though!), nor do I know people by reputation which is apparently a thing? So knowing what someone has played across games doesn’t…really have much of a point for me. And it becomes clutter instead of useful information.
Also, it sort of throws OOC in my face when I’m IC in a way that just their character name on a channel doesn’t. Weird but true!
Thanks for explaining, and as I said I will think about adding that feature.
Just for perspective of why it is the way it is, though, FWIW…
For me it’s a matter of delineating IC and OOC. If I’m talking on channels, in my ideal world it would just be “Faraday says…” because I’m talking as a player. It shouldn’t matter who my character is in that context, because I’m not speaking as my character (and in fact I may have multiple characters, so which one is ‘speaking’ on channel is kinda arbitrary.)
That ideal is not currently possible because handles are optional and many people, like you, still associate people predominately with their characters instead of their OOC identity. But building that community aspect is something that I’m striving for with Ares. That is why I will have to consider whether I want people to be able to turn that off.
Either way, though, I appreciate the feedback.
No problem! And actually, I think your idea of handle-only channels would get to me less than the combination of character names and handles, for the same reasons you said. Maybe it’s more that the current way, name+handle, is in that strange in-between of IC and OOC and I get startled out of it. It would be easier to ignore as OOC if it was all handle names or something. But! Thank you for taking my feature into consideration and explaining your goals.
Maybe a way to choose what you want displayed on a channel, character name, handle, or both?
I’ll consider that. I think I would be more inclined to offer “hide character name if the person has a handle” than “hide handle name” but I will have to think it over more.
Other folks are welcome to chime in to the thread here as well if they have a preference.
I like seeing the handle and the character name, but I wish it was less cluttered-looking in chat, and I can see how having the option to display or not display would be nice.
I think putting the character-name in bold and the handle-name in lighter gray would help clean up the view?
[Chat] KarmaBum (@afakehandle) says, “Like so.”
For me automatic handle sharing is a pretty big invasion of privacy and just a non-starter. Handles have some conveniences, but being unable to opt out of sharing them feels wrong.
but… I’m also one of those weird people that don’t have social media for similar reasons.
Handles are completely optional, so if you don’t like them, nothing requires you to have one, or to link characters to it. I don’t see how there’s any invasion of privacy involved. It’s just like social media. If you dislike sharing things on Facebook, don’t join Facebook. 
It is worth noting that I did explore the possibility of private handles back when I first designed the handle system. There were originally going to be three privacy levels: Public (which is what we have today), Private (only for you) and Friends Only.
There were countless problems with implementing such a system. Not from a code perspective, but from a user-experience perspective.
For example… I’m friends with Skew and Roadspike, but not Harvey. I’m chatting on channel, so Skew and Roadspike can see “Cate (@Faraday) says…” But Harvey doesn’t see that. As soon as someone says: “Well, like Faraday said…” I’m outed. Friends-only just isn’t practical.
Now we’re down to public or private. But the thing with Private is… it’s really not entirely private. Staffers can still see the link. So if your privacy is still compromised, and you don’t get any of the community aspects. It kind of becomes a lame feature. It’s like joining Facebook just to share posts only with yourself. There are better tools to do that, and I don’t have the inclination to build in this whole complicated privacy system for so little gain.
So - handles are public. Expectations are clear and the system is easy to understand. If you value your privacy, which is completely understandable, just don’t opt-in.