Allow moderator to attach an avatar/name to own statements

[patcon]

Reticketed from 2021-01-09 call, in response to questions from Angie (@dataHumanist).

Angie mentioned that it felt dishonest (and not in the spirit of how she wishes to engage with her communities) to prime a conversation with statements that are not attributed to her. She was looking for a way to attach identifying information. She knew that attaching a Facebook account would be a work-around, but she doesn't have a Facebook account. (Twitter is not possible to attach to a moderator account.)

Having a way to attach he identity to seed statements (or more clarity around doing it with a separate account) would seemingly address her needs.

Work-around

1. Ensure you have a Twitter account (new or existing)
2. Log into admin account and create a new conversation
3. Log out of admin, and visit public participation page.
4. Submit a new statement, and log in via your Twitter account, creating a new account as a participant.
5. Submit all desired statements (note that one "agree" vote will be attached to each)
6. If using strict moderation, log back in as admin and approve all statements.

[dataHumanist]

Thank-you, this sounds great.

[colinmegill]

The method @patcon suggests above is not a workaround. Any user (including the conversation creator) can submit a statement as themselves by following the above steps (using the participation interface).

This ensures that multiple moderators can all seed as themselves if they so choose. Seed comments are the only available way to submit anonymous statements that don't have an 'agree' vote automatically attached to them.

Please do note that all seed comments submitted via participation interface will have an automatic agree attached.

I've updated the knowledge base with reference to this issue.

[patcon]

Meant to share this early. Not helpful to when using the main hosted server, but if you're self-hosting you polis instance, @PDIS team wrote a helper script for manually overriding name and avatar:
https://github.com/PDIS/polisServer-archived/blob/local-polis/hackScript/modifyUserNamePic