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Quora has blocked me because it doesn't think Theodore Ts'o is my real name

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Re: Quora has blocked me because it doesn't think Theodore Ts'o is my real name

#131

Post by notacoward »

joelthelion wrote: post #81

Quora has been completely ruined by dogmatic Silicon Valley thinking and poor monetization attempts. Content cloaking, removal of the credit system, deliberate choice to promote crappy clickbaity answers as opposed to quality ones, aggressive question length limits... I think there is definitely space for someone to recreate the original Quora without the delusions of grandeur. A place for people to exchange question…

I was a Top Writer on Quora for two years in a row. I ended up quitting it entirely for a whole laundry list of reasons. Chief among them was the uneven enforcement of rules and manipulation of answer rankings so that people who promote themselves and/or generally post catchy-but-crappy answers always end up at the top for every question and every topic. Quora is more like those "one weird trick" listicle sites than a place to find actual information or insight, and it's quite intentional on their part.

Re: Quora has blocked me because it doesn't think Theodore Ts'o is my real name

#132

Post by pvaldes »

speeder wrote: post #122
psankar wrote: post #118

Quora has blocked me too. For Tamils there is no last name but the idiots running quora insist that everyone should have a lastname. http://psankar.blogspot.in/2015/01/naming-policy-deactivated...

King of Greece has no surname. People insist in demanding surname, not just for real reasons, but to actually spite him. Greece even made a law after the king was deposed making surnames mandatory (and then promptly declared the guy noncitizen for illegally not having one)

In Spain only members of the king family can have more than two first names, by law.

Re: Quora has blocked me because it doesn't think Theodore Ts'o is my real name

#134

Post by jdietrich »

seiryuz wrote: post #44

Oh boy, Indonesian here, I only have one name (No last name). Websites that require me to have both first name and last name are the bane of my existence. Quora also blocked me, despite me sending an email to their appeal division with a copy of my ID. In the end I gave up fighting for it.

The British royal family have run into the same problem. Traditionally, they use a first name and a title, e.g. "Prince William, Duke of Cambridge". For legal purposes, they occasionally use the surname "Windsor" or "Mountbatten-Windsor". This is applied rather inconsistently - Prince William enlisted in the Air Force as "William Wales".

https://www.royal.uk/royal-family-name

Re: Quora has blocked me because it doesn't think Theodore Ts'o is my real name

#135

Post by mixedCase »

Theodores wrote: post #88
evilzombie wrote: post #79

Come to think of it, why do first/middle/last names need separate fields in a database, in terms of bookkeeping? Why do I absolutely need to be filed as [Ms] [Evil] [Z.] [Ombie]? Wouldn't [Ms Evil Z. Ombie] do? I don't even see how a family name relates you to your own parents when it's very likely there may be a few thousands, even millions of people with your last name, and even with your own combination of two or…

Recently I split some forms out from 'name' to 'firstname' and 'lastname'. An extra column was added to the backend table too. So why did I do this, go from what you want to something else? What was the evil marketing intent? Those names also get used by other systems, therefore to create a support ticket in 3rd party system, extra name needed. There is also the small matter of writing back to whomever filled in the…

As it was mentioned somewhere else, asking for a full legal name and a shorthand form ("what you'd want us to call you") is a good solution that covers both usecases.

Re: Quora has blocked me because it doesn't think Theodore Ts'o is my real name

#136

Post by mixedCase »

gpvos wrote: post #96
Theodores wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently I split some forms out from 'name' to 'firstname' and 'lastname'. An extra column was added to the backend table too. So why did I do this, go from what you want to something else? What was the evil marketing intent? Those names also get used by other systems, therefore to create a support ticket in 3rd party system, extra name needed. There is also the small matter of writing back to whomever filled in the…

Why do companies want to know my gender at all? I am offended anytime some form asks me for it, often even making the field mandatory. It is seldom relevant to my relation with the company.

Advertisement purposes.

Re: Quora has blocked me because it doesn't think Theodore Ts'o is my real name

#137

Post by mixedCase »

aq3cn wrote: post #99

Oh God, another blow to end anonymity. This is sad. I still have a way to remain anonymous which is to only give my first name. There are already thousands of people with my name, so I feel protected in crowd. Do you think this will cause a ban?

> Do you think this will cause a ban?

Much like everything, only if they find out. To get an anonymous experience in these websites you'll have to assume a fake identity.

Re: Quora has blocked me because it doesn't think Theodore Ts'o is my real name

#138

Post by marssaxman »

titanomachy wrote: post #58
parennoob wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about Quora's "work with a mod to verify the name" policy works, but I have heard from at least one friend that Facebook makes you give them a scan your driving license or other Government ID in order to show that your slightly unusual name is actually what you say it is. Which is just absurd. A random social network should never be so powerful as to demand your Government-issued IDs for some bogus "real…

You probably won't have to worry about it unless you become famous.

My girlfriend had to worry about it last week. It was a pretty crappy experience.

Re: Quora has blocked me because it doesn't think Theodore Ts'o is my real name

#139

Post by sergers »

cyberferret wrote: post #105
gbog wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I had this issue when working for some administrative software, and other problems like what date of birth do you input for the many people which have unknown date of birth? I have also seen many handwritten "identification papers" which you'd have very hard time deciphering anything from it with some degree of certainty. We believe our times are more free than past times, but that's only partially true. In some…

Yep, I used to do a lot of work for indigenous communities, designing databases and the like. I was amazed to discover that something like a known date of birth was a rarity, especially amongst the Aboriginal elders. No birth certificates. Usually the data was obtained from other family members, purely from memory or based on other events around the same time. In a lot of cases, only the year was known. If you were l…

my mom was born in india in the sixties. she didnt get a birth certificate till ~4 years after she was born

she immigrated to canada, and her passport/license/citizen hip in canada reflect the date of the birth certificate.

wrong month, wrong day, wrong year.

funny thing is her cousin was born 3 years after and immigrated to canada, he was born in a major city in india and in a hospital, so had a birth cert at time time of birth.

he is older according to canadian govt issued IDs, yet my mom has pictures of herself holding him when he was a new born.

we celebrate both of my moms birthdates, one on May 3rd (family recollection in relation to historical event) of her real birthday, and July 8th according to her govt issued IDs

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