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

Admin staff in GP surgeries often don't understand the ID requirements, and also will copper-bottom any regs they do know about.

This can lead to some onerous requirements when people want to change name.

Your GP surgery should have a system for gathering patient feedback (it's something the CQC looks for) so you can try using that.

If you don't get anywhere with their process you could try your local clinical commissioning group.

If you wanted to go the technical route you could ask what software they use, and find a user group for that software to ask how it would be done.

Of course, you shouldn't need to do any of that. It sucks that they're making you jump through hoops.

Quora's "real name policy" is just moronic.

The thing is that Quora doesn't care at all if the name is real or not. What is important for them is that the name looks real.

They think this policy (where people are making up fake but plausible names) makes the site seem more credible...

And this is what they now have accomplished, a site populated by millions of subscribers with plausible but fake names.

It also means that you are less likely to tell if a poster is using a pseudonym or their real name.

I think it is perfectly ok to use pseudonyms in this type of communities. And allowing pseudonyms does NOT result in more spam or trolling since a fake name is as easy to create.

When I use a pseudonym I very much would like to be able to signal to other users the fact that it is a pseudonym, easiest done by purposely using an id that is obviously NOT a real name. That is just sensible courtesy to other users, and what you would expect from other users.

But Quora have chosen to force people to instead use fake names.

It depends a bit on the source, or how you count, apparently.

(Not sure if you'll see this reply this late, but...)

The situation regarding ID's is a mess, but I believe I'll be able to fly, to the US or wherever, without issues (though I haven't done so yet).

The reason is that, India being a multicultural country, our central government that issues passports assumes a firstname-lastname pattern as well. And back when I got the passport, I didn't yet understand the firstname-lastname concept, and just followed the passport office employee's instruction: "don't leave that 'surname' field empty, that's for your father's name". I was curious why the heck someone would label that field as surname, but just took it as part of bureaucracy. And so, I have a passport to the name "myname fathersname".

The "mess" I referred to in the first line is about how different ID's have my name in different forms: let's say my name was David and my dad's is Michael. I have government issued id's that say my name is:

* David

* David M.

* M David Michael (yes, really)

* M David

(and possibly others that I'm forgetting)