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When operating "at web scale", users often simply don't have "real names"

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Re: When operating "at web scale", users often simply don't have "real names"

#61

Post by badclient »

teyc wrote: post #58
patio11 wrote: post #2

This title is 5 words longer than it could be, because people don't have real names. Apologies in advance for the self-citation: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b... My name+ is confusing gibberish where I live. It is highly likely likely that when I have children, they will go through life having multiple sets of gibberish so that they can pick the non-gibberish option when asked "What is…

FB bans my real name because one of it is deemed offensive.

I've heard that they have a streamlined process to avoid false positives by sending them additional documentation.

Re: When operating "at web scale", users often simply don't have "real names"

#62

Post by salvadors »

ilkandi wrote: post #40
gaius wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I know people who IRL insist on being called by made-up names, mostly goths, you know, something like Darkraven Bloodmisery. Whatever they called themselves in Livejournal. Very few of them follow through tho' and fill in a deed poll form! For me that's the acid test: whatever it says on your passport is your real name. And government IT - the least efficient kind! - has managed to solve this. Why can't the mig…

On which passport? I have two.

With different names on each?

Re: When operating "at web scale", users often simply don't have "real names"

#63

Post by glhaynes »

blauwbilgorgel wrote: post #13

Having a Dutch surname like "Spring in 't Veld" (roughly translates to "Jump in th' Field") causes all kinds of problems on form entries and editors that add smart quotes. - Many non-sanitized SQL queries fail, - buggy URL or HTML parsers create code like: /spring-in/ - Pagetitles like: Spring in /'t Veld - Added smart quotes "Spring in ’t Veld" from Word or Rich Text Editors cause problems with sorting and identity…

Do you have any opinion on what the practices should be with names like yours? Should we somewhere between the view layer and the persistence layer convert to a canonical form? If so, can you provide any links for widely-preferred ways to do so?

About to find myself building some such systems and would prefer to do it right…

Re: When operating "at web scale", users often simply don't have "real names"

#64

Post by extension »

jchrisa wrote: post #3

One of the stupidest things we've done as a culture in the last generation, is bend our ideas about what is and isn't "well-formed", so that we don't offend computers. Fixing this is a big part of why I am motivated to work on schemaless databases. When your database doesn't ask you do predefine the data structures, it's one less opportunity for an ignorant programmer to blunt the human spirit.

Well.. if the database doesn't enforce a schema explicitly, then the code will impose one implicitly. Maybe that makes some types of applications easier to develop. But the user doesn't get much say in the matter either way.

Re: When operating "at web scale", users often simply don't have "real names"

#65

Post by politician »

tantalor wrote: post #37

What does this have to do with "web scale"? I don't see this phrase in either the article or the reference in the article.

The title is a reference to the fact that G+'s identity system fails to cope with names considered normal in their respective cultural contexts. In fact, it couldn't be more to do with "web scale" since it refers to how literally everyone in the world reveals their (sometimes multiple) identities through Google's world wide social network.

Re: When operating "at web scale", users often simply don't have "real names"

#66

Post by nickzoic »

glhaynes wrote: post #63
blauwbilgorgel wrote: post #13

Having a Dutch surname like "Spring in 't Veld" (roughly translates to "Jump in th' Field") causes all kinds of problems on form entries and editors that add smart quotes. - Many non-sanitized SQL queries fail, - buggy URL or HTML parsers create code like: /spring-in/ - Pagetitles like: Spring in /'t Veld - Added smart quotes "Spring in ’t Veld" from Word or Rich Text Editors cause problems with sorting and identity…

Do you have any opinion on what the practices should be with names like yours? Should we somewhere between the view layer and the persistence layer convert to a canonical form? If so, can you provide any links for widely-preferred ways to do so? About to find myself building some such systems and would prefer to do it right…

Names are just Unicode strings, which you should not fold, spindle or mutilate. Why do you care which bit is the family name, or if this person has a family name, or even if there is such a thing as a family name in their family's culture? Why even try for a canonical form?

Even better, make name a _list_ of Unicode strings, so people who have multiple names (Chinese/Western, pre/post marriage, pre/post op) can give you the whole list to search on.

If asking for their credit-card details, ask "Name As Printed On This Credit Card" and store that as well so you can bill them. That's really a property of the card, not the person.

And then just add a "Informal Name" field so you're not stuck guessing which bit is the informal name, or writing "Dear Roderick Frederick Ronald Arnold William MacArthur McBan" which does sound kind of dorky ...

Re: When operating "at web scale", users often simply don't have "real names"

#67

Post by ars »

salvadors wrote: post #62
ilkandi wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On which passport? I have two.

With different names on each?

That's pretty common for dual American/Israeli citizenship. Lots of Jews have two names: A Hebrew name and an English name.

Sometimes they are transliterations of each other, sometimes translations, and sometimes no relationship between them at all.

Re: When operating "at web scale", users often simply don't have "real names"

#68

Post by nradov »

I am disappointed by how software developers continuously reinvent the wheel badly. There have been comprehensive data models for human names available for years. For example see the HL7 V3 EntityName data type. http://www.hl7.org/v3ballot/html/infrastructure/datatypes_r2... Any Entity can have multiple names, each of which is tagged with zero or more use codes such as "official", "pseudonym", "maiden", "tribal", etc. Each EntityName has one or more ordered parts which can optionally be tagged with a type: prefix, suffix, family name, given name. This data model isn't fully complete since it's missing some naming concepts such as patronymics but at least it's a better start than the mess that Google came up with.

Re: When operating "at web scale", users often simply don't have "real names"

#69

Post by thristian »

SeoxyS wrote: post #16
FaceKicker wrote: post #11

As much as I understand the privacy concerns etc., am I the only one who REALLY hates being on Facebook and seeing a fake name with all sorts of odd punctuation and random capitalization in a list that consists otherwise of clean "Firstname Lastname"s? Even seeing "Equality" as someone's middle name bothers me to an extent. Maybe I have OCD, but I'm personally glad I don't have to see this on Google+ for now (but I w…

I totally agree. I can't stand people who put random crap in their Facebook names (and actually tend to unfriend them.) Similarly, I religiously give everybody on my IM buddy list their real name. I would go crazy if everyday I only saw pseudonyms and had no idea who was who.

I don't use Facebook, but many of my Google+ contacts are people that I've know for years on IRC. I'm going crazy because I can't see pseudonyms, and so I have no idea who's who.

Re: When operating "at web scale", users often simply don't have "real names"

#70

Post by tantalor »

politician wrote: post #65
tantalor wrote: post #37

What does this have to do with "web scale"? I don't see this phrase in either the article or the reference in the article.

The title is a reference to the fact that G+'s identity system fails to cope with names considered normal in their respective cultural contexts. In fact, it couldn't be more to do with "web scale" since it refers to how literally everyone in the world reveals their (sometimes multiple) identities through Google's world wide social network.

It might be a poorly defined term, but I believe "web scale" refers to the performance and availability, not features, of web applications. To say "They messed up feature X for population Y" doesn't speak to their ability to scale.

No matter how much effort Google put into supporting "real names", they would still disappoint somebody. Does Facebook do this any better? I believe they also require users to provide their "real name".

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