Auction transparency: the activity feed and anonymous bidders

When you sell, you control how much of the activity on your listing is public. You can run an open listing with full comments and a visible bid feed, or a quieter one where bidders are anonymous and the feed is hidden, all without changing how the sale or the price works. This article gathers those controls in one place: the per-listing toggles, and how a sale event can set a policy that overrides them.

The three controls on your listing

Every listing's create and edit form has an Activity feed section. It changes only what is shown about participation, never the bidding, the holds, or the final price.

• Show comments: turn on or off the public question-and-answer comments on your listing. With it on, buyers can ask questions and you can post updates; with it off, there is no public comment thread.
• Show bid activity: show or hide the live bid-by-bid feed. This is the running list of each bid as it lands. Important: even with it off, the current price and the bid count still show. Hiding the feed hides the play-by-play, not the price or the level of interest.
• Show bidders as anonymous numbers (auctions only): when on, bidders appear in the feed as Bidder #1, Bidder #2, and so on, rather than by name and profile. This is the only one of the three that is auction-specific; a fixed-price listing does not have it.

What "anonymized bidders" does and does not hide

Anonymizing bidders is about the public view, not about you:

• You and Creatures admins always see real identities. Anonymization applies to other viewers, never to the seller or to Creatures staff. You always know who is bidding on your animal.
• A bidder who posts a public comment still shows their name. Comments are identified by design, so anonymization covers the bid feed, not the comment thread. Someone who comments has chosen to be named there.
• The winner can show as a number too. On an auction where bidders are anonymized, the winning bidder appears to other viewers as "Bidder #N" on the closed listing as well, while you still see who won.

How a sale event can override your choice

If you list into a sale event, the organizer can set event-wide policies that take precedence over your per-listing toggles. For each control, the organizer picks one of:

• Leave it to the seller. Your per-listing toggle stands ("Each seller chooses" for comments and bid activity, or "Let sellers decide" for bidder identity).
• Force it on or off for the whole event. For comments and bid activity, the organizer can set "On for every listing" or "Off for every listing." For bidder identity, the organizer can set "Show real names" or "Anonymize bidders."

When an organizer forces a setting, your toggle for it is locked on the listing and shows the organizer's choice, so the whole event reads consistently. When the organizer leaves it to sellers, your toggle works normally. The organizer sets these on the event; see Creating a sale event.

Picking your settings

There is no single right answer. An open feed with named bidders builds visible momentum and trust on a hot animal; anonymized bidders and a hidden feed keep a sale discreet and can reduce bidder hesitation. Because none of it touches the price or the mechanics, choose based on the feel you want for that listing. Buyers see the other side of all this in How auctions and bidding work.

Related information

• Listing an animal for auction
• Creating a sale event
• What sale events are

Updated on: 25/06/2026