I'm reading this as if you mean people searching your character from information available on the forums so this first reply is in response to that:

It's just discrimination against the validity of peoples opinions based on a number of things. If it's not that it's the post count, or the character ranks. Everyone discriminates against one thing or another in others posts whether they realise it or not. Discrimination can be helped by hiding as much as possible on the forums, although it's impossible to wipe it out completely. Even if everything was hidden people would still discriminate against bad spelling, grammar, formatting of posts, etc.

I would like post counts to be hidden for this reason as I know I discriminate against people with large post counts. In my opinion they tend to be the ones who post the first thing that comes to their mind without properly thinking it through, meaning less valid arguements. I've also seen posts on here of people actually saying "you have a low post count so your opinion doesn't matter".

Personally, I have signatures and avatars hidden as they don't contain useful information. The less people know about the person posting the more open their mind is when reading the actual content of the posts.


Now, with regards to hiding information so people ingame can't see you... I expect most people wouldn't bother hiding their information. It is a useful tool, however I guess if people wish to hide their information then they should be allowed to do so. The history section can seem a little bit stalkerish to some people since it's like you're being watched at all times and everyone can see what you done and when you did it. A little checkbox section in the lodestone options for what information you want to be public would make a lot of sense, ie. show character profile, show blog, show history, etc. You could also go with the option of allowing viewing of information to followers only, and provide the option of manual validation of new followers of your profile/blog.