Enable user to make request with real name, but don't publish their real name

[RichardTaylor]

A user has requested the ability to make a request under their real name (so it is a valid request, and can be appealed etc.) but they don't want their name published.

In the case which prompted raising this ticket they had a good reason for not wanting their name published, but they wanted the request and response to be published so it could be available for use by others.

Comments:

While such a feature might well be useful in certain circumstances it's not something that we can easily offer as part of our automated system for technical reasons - the public body would be expected to include the name in their reply - and we can't reliably, automatically, remove names from responses - especially if those names are in certain types of PDFs, or in images of text for example.

One could perhaps envisage a request being made via our "Pro" service, and "embargoed" (not initially published), we could then seek to redact it, and if the user was happy with the redaction they could release it from embargo. This isn't an established way of using the Pro service and it's not currently designed with that use in mind - not least as all correspondence is currently eventually published if the embargo isn't regularly renewed.

Possible workaround:

...make the request privately and directly, and then once you have a response make a request under a pseudonym on WhatDoTheyKnow, asking for "A copy of the response to FOI request, reference XXX". 

[garethrees]

Similar to #6174 / #285 (comment).

[RichardTaylor]

This issue is actually a duplicate of the closed issue at #1776

[garethrees]

This issue is actually a duplicate of the closed issue at #1776

Hmm yeah, I think having looked at that discussion I think this should be closed too. I don't think we'd ever be confident about keeping the name private if it were sent through to the authority in some way.