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Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

randomtechnicalstuff.blogspot.com

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Re: Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

#71

Post by mistermcgruff »

daphneokeefe wrote: post #55

Try having an apostrophe in your last name. O'Brien, O'Keefe, O'Dell and my fave O'Charley's. It is really simple to accommodate this in software and databases, but the problem is getting worse and worse. The pharmacy can't find my prescription, the cleaners can't find my clothes, my doctor's office can't find my appointment. My passport doesn't match my drivers license. Some of my credit cards have the apostrophe an…

That really stinks. I can't imagine how annoying that must get. I work at an email service provider, and I deal with about two billion email addresses from all around the world. Apostrophes are certainly a consideration when working with emails, loading them to and from databases. But the spec for what's a valid email is very very wide. Lots of special characters including apostrophes are technically valid, so if I'm doing an analysis that requires email as a unique key, but I don't actually need to know the addresses, I'll just hash each address. It's lazy, but man does it solve a lot of special cases.

Re: Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

#73

Post by ceejayoz »

codesilverback wrote: post #46
voteapathy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I would suspect that Google makes deliberate choices on how they set up these sorts of things. They've probably built models which demonstrate that only n percent of the global population will be affected by a certain naming policy and the differences in cost associated with modifying their databases or to accommodate such names or dealing with troll accounts versus maintaining the status quo. [Keep in mind I o…

I'm not sure incompetence is the same as "doesn't handle every conceivable edge case." As the algorithms take over, "sorry, but you are an edge case we didn't get to" is going to be a common problem.

If it's all going to be handled by algorithms, there shouldn't be an appeals process. It seems like in this case "appeal" meant "automatically reprocess and reject again with a form message" until they got the media involved.

Re: Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

#74

Post by ceejayoz »

daphneokeefe wrote: post #55

Try having an apostrophe in your last name. O'Brien, O'Keefe, O'Dell and my fave O'Charley's. It is really simple to accommodate this in software and databases, but the problem is getting worse and worse. The pharmacy can't find my prescription, the cleaners can't find my clothes, my doctor's office can't find my appointment. My passport doesn't match my drivers license. Some of my credit cards have the apostrophe an…

NY's E-ZPass website tells me my last name (hyphenated) isn't valid every time I go to change billing details.

Some places I'm Sternal-Johnson, others SternalJohnson, others Johnson, others Sternal.

Re: Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

#75

Post by officemonkey »

daphneokeefe wrote: post #55

Try having an apostrophe in your last name. O'Brien, O'Keefe, O'Dell and my fave O'Charley's. It is really simple to accommodate this in software and databases, but the problem is getting worse and worse. The pharmacy can't find my prescription, the cleaners can't find my clothes, my doctor's office can't find my appointment. My passport doesn't match my drivers license. Some of my credit cards have the apostrophe an…

I call it the apostrophe catastrophe. Once in the 90s, my email system would send my email with an apostrophe in the address, but would only deliver email without an apostrophe in the address. The IT department told me that was "impossible" until I demonstrated it in front of him.

For electronic systems, I pretend the apostrophe doesn't exist. I'll still use it in writing, but if it's going to be an entry in a database, I leave it out.

Re: Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

#76

Post by officemonkey »

mcv wrote: post #42

Google's stupid name policy is probably their worst idea ever. Interestingly, it's somewhat undone by one of their other bad ideas: merging Youtube and Google+ accounts. Because nobody had a real name for their Youtube account, and suddenly Google creates a bunch of Google+ accounts that nobody asked for and are obviously pseudonyms.

I eliminated by Google+ account for a reason and I'm pissed to hell that I have to sign up again if I ever want to vote up or comment on a Youtube video again.

Re: Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

#77

Post by InclinedPlane »

tarblog wrote: post #22
harshreality wrote: post #5

Obligatory: patio11's Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b... (was dead, now live, if dead again it's in google's cache) However, until Google's (and Facebook's) absurd name restrictions (or even the idea that "proper" "official" names exist at all for humans) start seriously affecting their real customers (advertisers), they will not give a shit . An…

I dislike when lists are written in such a way that the reader must mentally negate all of the statements the author is making. It's more difficult for me to quote or remember out of context correctly. I also feel like I learned a lot less than if the author had told me the things that are common problems and how to fix them or offered a model of names that is less-bad than the one most websites use.

The problem is that handling names semantically "correctly" is a logistical nightmare that is even more difficult than dealing with timestamps and time zones.

No sane person thinks it's a good idea to just roll their own time zone implementation routinely, but people usually think rolling their own name handling system is a good idea. The purpose of patio11's advice is specifically to discourage people from doing that. And fortunately for names there are some reasonably good options, such as avoiding trying to handle names semantically at all and instead leaving them as more or less freeform user data.

Re: Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

#78

Post by protomyth »

"Yellow Horse", "Good Iron", are extremely common style of names on the northern plains for Native Americans. This is one basic reason why we had to go with Microsoft versus Google. We couldn't trust Google's name policy not to screw a goodly chunk of our students. Plus, after the whole Google Voice thing which blocked one of the Tribal Community Colleges without many people caring, we just had to go with a company that we could call.

Re: Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

#79

Post by protomyth »

hellbanTHIS wrote: post #66

Why did Yellow Horse want to use her real name? Attaching your real name and photo to everything Google knows about you seems like a pretty bad idea.

Because she is a professional that needs to use her actual name, plus she was following the rules.

Re: Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

#80

Post by ZoFreX »

daphneokeefe wrote: post #55

Try having an apostrophe in your last name. O'Brien, O'Keefe, O'Dell and my fave O'Charley's. It is really simple to accommodate this in software and databases, but the problem is getting worse and worse. The pharmacy can't find my prescription, the cleaners can't find my clothes, my doctor's office can't find my appointment. My passport doesn't match my drivers license. Some of my credit cards have the apostrophe an…

> The sneering response to this is that I should change my name.

REALLY? Computers exist to bend to our needs, not the other way around!

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