I used to know a guy whose name (really) was Michael Hunt.
I had an actual comp sci textbook in college written by Harold Beaver.
Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'
31–40 of 149 posts
Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'
#32I haven't run into this problem yet, but I certainly expect to at some point. Especially since my last name is even a bit more suggestive than simply 'butts' or 'weiner'.
Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'
#33The article mentions human moderators as a solution. Maybe, unless they're part of a pathologically awful system like Wikipedia.
You have a username policy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Username_policy
You have a notice board for blatant violations of policy (although it gets used for a lot of other stuff): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Usernames_for_admini...
You have a holding pen for usernames that have been reported but not yet blocked, for further monitoring: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Usernames_for_admini...
Because the username policy isn't enough policy the UAA and UAA Holding pen have their own instructions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment...
And because two different pages to report usernames to isn't enough there's yet another for things that aren't as blatant as UAA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment...
It's actively hostile to people with names like those mentioned in the article.
Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'
#34I worked at an ISP in the '90s, and our first paid customer was John Blank. On several occasions, a well-meaning biller would delete his account because it was "obvious a test".
Seems ‘Schmoe’ is a real, or at least adopted, last name. Linked in lists a few Schmoes, including Joe and John. Must be hillarious.
Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'
#35When I was in elementary school, the Vice Principal's name was Mr. Butts. That was uproariously funny to my young self. Now I kind of feel bad for the guy, being the brunt of an endless stream potty humor from "clever" pre-teens..
Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'
#36I believe this is a dying problem. The next social media will be based around a real life user. First name, last name, photo, home address(or similar). Everything verified or at least enough for people to feel like they are talking to real people. Given how easily reddit is astroturfed by Aldi, Tmobile, Samsung, Tesla, Donald Trump, and more, the next gen social media will revolve around real people rather than usern…
What makes you feel it'd be any harder to astroturf a site based around real people? Especially for corporate sponsors.
Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'
#37When I was in elementary school, the Vice Principal's name was Mr. Butts. That was uproariously funny to my young self. Now I kind of feel bad for the guy, being the brunt of an endless stream potty humor from "clever" pre-teens..
If your surname is Butts and you chose a career path in elementary education, you know what you're signing up for.
Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'
#38> Take the case of Jennifer Null, for instance, whose name was frequently rejected in input fields because the program treated her last name as a form of code, rather than text For all those who say javascript the language is fine: ^^
This was probably SQL.
As for JavaScript, I recall how I registered an account with user name "undefined" for TheDailyWTF article comments. Later they moved their comment system and forums to Discourse and due to some bug my account was linked under every item in the list of likes under every post.
Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'
#39A similar problem happens when the name itself is only considered offensive in certain cultures, but is completely benign in the culture of the person with the name. I remember two gaming related incidents where people were blocked from making accounts; one was a south american using "negro" as his username being prevented from creating an account, even though english speakers with the username "black" are fine; the…
There are over 20 persons named “Fag” in Sweden: https://www.hitta.se/sök?vad=Fag&typ=prv&sort=a-ö&sida=1
None can use their real names on certain services like Facebook.
Re: Life on the Internet Is Hard When Your Last Name Is 'Butts'
#40As George Carlin pointed out[1], it's the context of the use of language that determines whether it's good or bad. So machine learning just sucks at determining context. Trying to get people to stop being offended by the utterance of arbitrary sounds probably will never happen, but at least we can make computers less stupid. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUvdXxhLPa8 (trigger warning: comedy)
This sparked a memory of sprinter Tyson Gay’s last name being automatically edited[0] to be “less offensive”(?) by a religious org’s news website. Simply searching for and replacing certain words is bound to fail.