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Quora To Oddly-Named Users: Papers Please

148 points by achompas 16y ago

RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
I registered with Quora using my legal name as documented on credit cards, my library card, my utilities bills and my drivers license. My account was blocked, and I was asked to register with my "proper" name. So far my replies have been ignored. So I've left.
- Vivtek 16y ago
  Your parents should have known not to name you "Rider". What were they thinking? It's bad enough you're saddled with the surname "Giraffes".
  - RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
    <grin> I should've known someone would make the comment. Oh no - wait - I did. But no, I didn't try to register with RiderOfGiraffes. That would just be silly.
  - user24 16y ago
    > saddled...
  - pyre 16y ago
    Giraffes isn't his surname. It's his hometown. ;-)
- deleted 16y ago
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- nika 16y ago
  I registered with a completely fake name, though it sounds like a real name rather than a handle. I have to wonder about a mother who names her kid "Quora" anyway, and I would like to point out that Quora isn't giving us her last name, yet she demands that we give her ours? I learned my lesson with facebook, which promised privacy and then years later made the data public. That is the last site that got my real name. I've changed my name on facebook several times to completely obviously fake names, and while they claim that you have to use your real name and they claim to review them, no repercussions. I'm only keeping the account while I go back, and delete old status updates a few months at a time anyway. And really, no website actually needs it. Trying to fight it is silly, as there is no mechanism whereby you can authenticate identity online. Faxing a passport doesn't even work, unless the business is tied into the government network, and if it is, then other businesses are as well and fake passports become easier.
  - yuhong 16y ago
    "I learned my lesson with facebook, which promised privacy and then years later made the data public." FYI, it is not that simple.
  - rexf 16y ago
    > I registered with a completely fake name, though it sounds like a real name rather than a handle. This is why their real name policy is flawed. A real name that sounds fake gets flagged as fake. A fake name that sounds real does not get flagged. The process is completely subjective as to what sounds real. Requiring ID is one way to prove/disprove it, but checking scanned IDs does not scale well.
  - T-hawk 16y ago
    > Trying to fight it is silly, as there is no mechanism whereby you can authenticate identity online. Handling fake names or other identifiers is like handling software piracy. You can't prevent it and technology can't prevent it. The pathological cases will do their thing anyway. The best you can do is make it sufficiently inconvenient that the bulk of users will simply go the legit route and the bulk of clowns will go away. Incurring some false positives is a cost, which Quora has chosen to bear. This is what government itself does for issuing its own IDs. They just have the power for "sufficiently inconvenient" to include criminal charges.
    - pyre 16y ago
      > Incurring some false positives is a cost, which Quora > has chosen to bear. The issue here is that you cannot claim to be an 'international' company just because anyone can sign up. If you discriminate against people whose names are 'weird' just because they don't conform to your cultural norms, then all you're doing is exposing your ignorance to the international community that you're hoping to embrace. Stating that Quora is 'open to entire world, so long as they conform to American cultural ideals' is just confirming that stereotype of the American business man that shows up in a foreign country to do business, expects everything to work like it does in America and views all local culture/customs to be 'inferior' because things work so much better in America. On top of that Quora doesn't seem to even have a consistent policy, or so it appears from their communications. The first 'your name appears to be fake' communication implies that the user just needs to say, "Yup, that's my real name," and all will be well. The further communications relay the message that once you've been determined to be 'fake' you need to provide a government id.
- jackowayed 16y ago
  Related idea I got: one "easy" (nonmanual, not super-invasive) way for them verify names would be to do a credit card verification, which would verify that they had a credit card in that name. But people probably wouldn't be too keen to give their credit card info to a free site just for "name verification".
  - hkuo 16y ago
    This works for people with credit cards, but there would need to be another layer for people without credit cards.
  - bkmartin 16y ago
    People do it for "free" prOn sites all the time for "age" verification purposes. If the perceived value is there, then people will do it.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - gergles 16y ago
    Credit cards don't verify names anyway, it's not even an option to get back from the authorization network. You can use a credit card to verify addresses, but not names.
  - sidek 16y ago
    Three words: Gift credit cards.
    - jackowayed 16y ago
      But most people aren't dedicated enough to trolling to get a gift credit card so they can verify the fake name they want to troll with.
    - ja2ke 16y ago
      Given that my name is "Valued Customer," that influx of gift card users would probably fuck my chances of ever getting a validated Quora account.
dabent 16y ago
I know from experience the difficulties an unusual name can bring, but Quora hasn't called me out just yet. I value their desire to build an authentic community, but other sites have grown without resorting to this sort of tactic. Fakes eventually are known based on their posts. Speaking of fakes, Flickr cofounder Caterina Fake has had all kinds of problems due to her (real) last name: http://caterina.net/archive/001011.html http://caterina.net/archive/001011.html At worst, I've been asked if I was "one of them foreigners" by a landlord years back.
- deleted 16y ago
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- nika 16y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by an "authentic community". I have many friends on social networks whom I've never met in real life and whose names I have no knowledge of, but they are real people, and the relationship is authentic, based on our interactions. They are not fake, they are simply anonymous. Further, by having some anonymity, I can say things that I otherwise would not be comfortable saying. This is important on a site where the purpose is to answer questions. Is it better to get a vague question or to have an answer that fails to reveal critical information because this information might make a business associate look bad? Or would it be better to be able to say X attempted to do Y because they believed Z, and I thought Z true, but Z turned out to be W and so Y caused a Q. X is a good entity, they just made a mistake here, so beware of this kind of error if you do business with X.
  - yuhong 16y ago
    Quora already has an anonymous mode for that. Just click "Make Anon" when you need it.
    - benologist 16y ago
      That's probably not really anonymous - Quora almost certainly knows you posted it still even if they don't display that you did.
jister 16y ago
Why is Quora given so much attention?
- staunch 16y ago
  Because the tech bloggers all use and like it.
- whatrocks 16y ago
  You should ask them.
- l0nwlf 16y ago
  Because the quality of answers are good.
- FiReaNG3L 16y ago
  Facebook mafia, thats about it.
- joblessjunkie 16y ago
  Ditto -- it seems that I read about Quora on HN nearly every day, but I've never actually been taken to the site for any real purpose, or seen any of its actual content linked on HN.
- cletus 16y ago
  +1 To me, Quora is almost the ultimate non-story. There's nothing technically noteworthy about the idea or the platform. The only thing Quora has done well (and they have done really well at this) is to get Valley insiders to use it. Another way to put this is that it's a bubble story: journalists and Valleywags think it's much bigger than it is because all the other people in the same bubble talk about it. Outside of SV/SF, nobody really knows nor cares. It's a bit like the AT&T-iPhone story. Sure it sucks in SF/NY (it really does) but journalists and bloggers seem incapable or uninterested in considering that these two cities are representative of the whole country. Last year Quora got funding at a staggering $86M [1] (this sounds like post-money). It's Yahoo Answers meets Facebook, which just so happens to have an insider audience that won't necessarily translate more broadly. Frankly, I'd sell before people catch on. [1]: http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/28/quora-has-the-magic-benchmark-invests-at-86-million-valuation/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/28/quora-has-the-magic-benchma...
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
byrneseyeview 16y ago
Real names are part of Quora's premise. They can afford to reject people who make that hard to pull off. If they'd been founded in another country, they'd presumably have the same problem with some standard American names, but since they weren't, Hasan Hasan's argument falls a little flat. If he needs to use it, he can go by a middle name. I go by my middle name, because I share my first name with my father. No TechCrunch drama required.
- achompas 16y ago
  Respectful discussion is also a part of Quora's premise. It's hard to foster that discussion, though, when you've started giving users the runaround because their name doesn't look right to you.
- metageek 16y ago
  You're assuming he has more than two names.
user24 16y ago
Looks like Quora could do with reading patio11's myths about names: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...
- patio11 16y ago
  This puts me in mind of my credit card, whose database believes I am "Patrick McKenzie" and whose web tier enjoys throwing a "That input wasn't written in kana, please try again" on the "sign up for online access" page. When I called the credit card company to complain, they told me that they would need a government issued ID certifying to my name in kana prior to changing their DB record. The government will happily issue me an ID, and indeed legally mandate that I carry it everywhere, but only for my name exactly as it appears on my passport. US passports don't include kana? "Not our problem." Strangely enough, the small town bank that I do business with has been absurdly solicitous about this, and when a similar string comparison caused a bill payment to fail, the manager added a note to the file saying that dishonoring any bill directed to a foreign client at our branch office would henceforth require his written approval. It's just the gigantic megacorp bank in Tokyo which hasn't figured out that foreigners exist yet.
  - dedward 16y ago
    Somewhat understandable. Most passports that use different alphabets also tend to have romanized names on them to prevent this type of thing at immigration points.... do you think US Banks and tellers accept names in kana or kanji, cyrillic, greek, arabic, etc?
    - redthrowaway 16y ago
      When you're processing online payments, you're rather incompetent if you can't handle UTF-8.
  - jmaygarden 16y ago
    My first name is "Judge" and it gets dropped as a title every once in a while. I had a credit card issued with my middle initial as my first name. When I called to have it changed to my real name they insisted that documentation be provided to prove it. My immediate response was to cancel the credit card because creating a new account had a lower barrier to entry than correcting information in an existing account. Likewise, this was a "megacorp" bank.
georgecmu 16y ago
After all, unless you’re Cher or Sirhan Sirhan, nobody has the same first and last name. One of our top managers' name is Herman Herman. 10 years ago or so, he was working next to a guy, whose name was Martin Martin. Of course, Martin Herman was lurking nearby as well.
- awj 16y ago
  ...sounds like you worked in a 70's sitcom.
- Luc 16y ago
  Names in Egypt often follow this pattern, because the second name is actually the father's given name. So you get combinations like Youssef Youssef or Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
- SerpentJoe 16y ago
  I'd say go find Herman Martin but it's probably like McDonald's Monopoly where you get the first three and the fourth is extremely rare.
- metageek 16y ago
  Was Martin Martin from Germany? Here at ITA, we used to (before my time) have someone of that name. He was born in Germany, but naturalized in the US; his last name was too difficult for many Americans, so he gave up and had it changed to match his first name, so it'd be easy to say and remember.
- pushingbits 16y ago
  One of my teachers in high school was named Rafael Rafael. Grew up somewhere in Indonesia (I think) and never got a last name. So they just duplicated his first name.
  - sharkey 16y ago
    The uni department I worked at once had a student called "Daniel". He was on a engineering scholarship from somewhere in remote Africa and had never needed another name. He was rather rueful that nobody had told him to make one up when he applied for his passport, because it caused him all kinds of difficulty. He was all kinds of things on different bits of paper: "Daniel Daniel", "Daniel -" and, memorably, "Daniel Dash".
citricsquid 16y ago
I have no problem with displaying my full name (and address etc) but something irks me about forcing my full name to be displayed, it should be optional, if I want to use a username (which more people will recognise me by) why shouldn't I?
- ig1 16y ago
  No-one's forcing you to use Quora, Quora's goal is to maintain high-quality and one of the strategies that they're using to do that is require people use their real name. It's a perfectly legitimate strategy.
  - latortuga 16y ago
    Asserting that something is true doesn't make it so. I can say that you look like a ham sandwich but that doesn't mean you look like a ham sandwich. There are a number of reasons that it isn't a legitimate strategy. This story illustrates a few of them, namely that false positives and false negatives are hard to detect, and that alone is reason enough to reject the idea. Perhaps it is useful to examine the reason for identifying people. If it is, as you say, to maintain high quality, I would ask upon what causal basis that that conclusion rests; I submit StackOverflow and HN as examples of entities that show real names not to be a requirement for high quality discourse.
cshenoy 16y ago
Why not require them to be on LinkedIn and verify through that? Or verify through Facebook? Granted there are trolls on both but it's better than requiring ppl to send a scan of their gov't ID.
- benologist 16y ago
  Facebook requires government ids too. My fake account is locked till I submit one.
  - notahacker 16y ago
    Facebook has Hasan Hasans, and even a Hasan Hasan Hasan. My guess is their flags for fake accounts are a little better.
statictype 16y ago
Ugh. I can respect their desire to force people to use real names in order to keep discourse civil and intelligent. But that's an awfully big rathole to crawl into. See also: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...
vaksel 16y ago
personally I find this is very retarded...faking your name is easy. All you have to do is make a new Facebook account with a real sounding name, and noone would be the wiser. So whats the point of wasting valuable resources enforcing something this stupid?
pcorsaro 16y ago
The whole thing is ridiculous, but I want to point out something else the editor said that bugged me and seemed unnecessary: "...in order to use a site approximately as useful to the world as Yahoo! Answers." Do people really think it's that bad? I really like Quora for the most part and think it's way more useful than Yahoo! Answers.
- localhost3000 16y ago
  as it stands, Yahoo! Answers is currently far more useful to the world than Quora. This may change as Quora grows and builds a broader audience, but in terms of value delivered to # of people, it isn't even close...
BarkMore 16y ago
This is amusing. Quora might think that my real name is fake, but that's not a problem because I registered with a very ordinary sounding fake name.
buro9 16y ago
On the website I run, I ask for an email address during signup. All I do to check whether someone appears to be real is to use Rapportive in Gmail and see whether they appear on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. http://rapportive.com/ http://rapportive.com/ I don't force users to use real names, I think there's a real benefit in allowing people to use aliases. Rapportive allows me to really quickly grok whether the alias has an underlying real ID in terms of fighting spam and trolls. It's hardly a fool proof technique, but it answers the questions 9 times out of 10 which removes any need for me to create obstacles for my users to jump through. PS: Interesting aside: I really loathe Facebook due to a personal incident in my life that occurred on there. Rapportive were kind enough to understand this and then to write an exception into their codebase such that it never prompts me to connect with Facebook. Talk about customer service.
- ars 16y ago
  What do you do for people who don't have an account on those? Or people like me who use a different email address for every site?
  - buro9 16y ago
    Look at other things like your IP, user agent, etc. Spammers, things done by scripts... They give themselves away really easily. All I want is an obstacle enough that I know people aren't spamming and that if they troll they understand that it will reflect on their reputation. Do I need a real id? Nope. And clearly Quora don't either as they don't require over 99% of users verify their real id. It's just a spam prevention policy and helps cut down on trolls as it will (or has risk that it will) reflect on you. It's really not a good thing to start applying onerous terms and your users.
deleted 16y ago
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rbranson 16y ago
This is really lame, but parents, do heed: if at all possible, try to name your kids something normal. This is going to get much worse WAY before it gets better. Obviously you can't predict all cultural phenomenons (for instance, if you named your child "Ken Ryu" before Street Fighter hit the shelves) and you shouldn't do it just to please ignorant folks or know where your child will be living in the future ("Kumar??? What is that, like 5 O's and 2 U's?"), but don't intentionally make life difficult on your children just to make yourself laugh or to fulfill some nerd agenda.
- Qz 16y ago
  My name got me made fun of constantly as a kid, but if someone asked me if I would have rather been named something else, the answer is an immediate and resolute no. These days all I get is compliments for my name. Yesterday a new person at my tai chi class heard my name as I was showing up and started shouting out loud how awesome it was, then asked if we could switch (she had a pretty unique name as well). Weird names get you made fun of for maybe 8-10 years, but then the rest of your life is filled with compliments. Think of it as an investment.
- frossie 16y ago
  try to name your kids something normal Normal to whom? Aside from cultural issues, and aside from the notion that people should name the children to make up for the lack of a proper personal identification system on the Internet, that ship has long sailed. Have a look at your local paper's birth announcements - there aren't many Dicks and Janes anymore. Even older names have "creative" spellings that render them practically unrecognisable.
  - rbranson 16y ago
    Normality can be statistically proven. If using an abnormal name is not something that will benefit a child, what is the purpose of it, other than satisfying a sick urge to imprint the parents personality on the child? Would you only buy your boy pink clothes or name him "Elizabeth"? You are choosing for your child, and they deserve a name which is as neutral of a canvas as you can provide for them.
naner 16y ago
Targeting "fake-looking" names is useless if anyone can register with a realistic fake name with no scrutiny.
cj 16y ago
Facebook identifies my friend's first name as fake and forces her to spell it wrong. The name is Sushi. Her name is currently set as Sushii to compensate.
yuhong 16y ago
Personally, I use my real name almost everywhere, but if I was running a website, I would not go so far to require it.
EGreg 16y ago
If their approach lets fake but English sounding names go through, then they shouldn't discriminate against other names, period. If Quora wants people to use their real names, they should require them to link their facebook account -- and these days, even that is a poor guarantee of real names. Let's face it, people are striking back at the "real names" thing by altering their names on facebook, because you never know what they're going to make public by default next.
humj 16y ago
So what if you were lady gaga or something? Would she not be allowed to use quora without her real name? Or are fake names okay if you have celebrity status?
- joubert 16y ago
  My first thought was it would prevent Madonna, Moon Unit Zappa, Pope John Paul II from registering as well.
Supermighty 16y ago
I love that I can use different pseudo-anonymous handles on different websites. It gives me a chance to experiment and explore different facets of my life and personality that I wouldn't feel comfortable doing if that exploration were tied to my real name. Maybe Quora isn't the place for experimenting with identity. The Internet used to be a place where we were able to freely express ourselves. Increasingly it seems that we can only express ourselves if it's congruent with our IRL selves.
eik3_de 16y ago
I knew a guy in college that had the name "Harrison". He was from south-east asia. In fact, he told me that from where he comes from, they don't have such thing as first and last name, his name was really just "Harrison". But since no one in the "western world" could handle that, he used Harrison both as first and last name. Lessons for me: things might be very different on the other side of the globe. Don't try to arrogantly believe you can judge wether things can be true or not from your limited experience and imagination.
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  >me that from where he comes from, they don't have such thing as first and last name, his name was really just "Harrison" People that don't have family names often use patronyms and the "[W]estern world" seems to cope just fine. Harrison ben Harry, Harrison Harrinpoika, Harrison Fitzharry¹ or what have you. --- 1 - all mean "Harrison son of Harry"
hkuo 16y ago
One need only look at the quality of comments on a site like Hacker News to see that "real names" is not a requirement for quality and valuable discussion. No doubt, real names would be an effective aspect to quality content, but if the system of verification is flawed, it's meaningless.
u48998 16y ago
Quora is an idiot. Internet should have its own revolution to get rid of such idiots from the wire.
awj 16y ago
So ... Quora doesn't want legitimate users? It's a pretty sad troll that can't figure out they need to make "real-sounding" names. Basically you're filtering out the twelve year olds that will try to write 'fuck' and 'shitcock' everywhere. That can be accomplished more effectively with some simple analysis on post content. Instead, you're really only making life hard on legitimate users that don't match your dramatically underinformed notion of a "proper" name.
jerf 16y ago
Godwined in the title. Wanting to be able to conclusively identify someone you are doing business with (as Quora is) is not being a Nazi, it's a foundation of civil society. It may be a bad choice by Quora for other reasons, they may be handling it poorly, you may disagree with them even if it is otherwise perfect, but it is certainly their right to decide with whom they are doing business and with what level of reliability in the identification. They aren't Nazis for that. Unless they're actually collecting accurate identities for the purposes of more efficiently murdering entire ethnicities at some point in the future? (And I mean, killing them, not merely "killing their account on Quora". I think the Nazis would be a smidge less reviled if they had merely cut the Jews out of participation in public fora.) And this article takes other political potshots for no good reason... "birtherist"? I think birtherism is silly too, but what's that potshot doing in the middle of this article?
- jat850 16y ago
  I either read an entirely different article than you or my Search feature is broken in Google Chrome. I found 0 instances of "Nazi" or "bitherist" in the TC article linked. Have I missed something?
  - RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
    With regards the Nazi reference, I suspect he's picking up on the "Ihre Papiere, Bitte" and the reference to jack-boots. The language, the phrase and the attire are all associated with the Nazi regime, although he never mentioned it by name. With regards the "birther-ist" comment, the article does say: "I think Quora’s ridiculous, birther-ist requirements for a “government-issued ID” are a little bit rough, ... " (edited for clarity)
    - jat850 16y ago
      Good catch. I didn't notice the picture accompanying the article until after I'd posted, and I searched for "bitherist" rather than "birther". Apologies to OP for overlooking their meaning.
    - 16y ago
codeglomeration 16y ago
Maybe it's part of their long term strategy. For now just require validation of fake sounding names. But as soon as you have critical mass, roll out the requirement for everybody to validate their names with valid IDs in order to continue using the system. That would make sense for the current state or requiring IDs for fake names. Then they can go to advertisers or just blatantly sell the data if it doesn't work out. Regardless if their intentions are good or bad, this data in the wrong hands can cause nuisance.
ANH 16y ago
I registered real first name, real last initial and they demanded I change in a couple of emails. Sorry, not gonna do it for a site I'm still on the fence about. I promptly deactivated my account and don't plan to return.
- ElbertF 16y ago
  They asked me if my last name was really "Gs". I told them yes and didn't hear from them after that.
sfphotoarts 16y ago
To be fair to Quora, it is their service and not some tax -payer funded government program, so they can accept whomever they choose on their site. These are their accounts to loose and I don't see why this is even news, or a blog post. So what if you can't come up with a name that sounds real. For a q&a site these guys certainly get a lot of HN attention.
ddkrone 16y ago
What exactly are they trying to accomplish with this policy? The stackexchange network of sites has "fake" names all over and yet they do business just fine.
Macha 16y ago
The assumption that those not wishing to disclose a real name have dishonest intentions (and that is what it comes down to), irks me. Personally, I prefer pseudonomity online. But apart from me, let's pick a more famous example or someone who was pseudonomynous online. Would Quora have allowed _why?
- ig1 16y ago
  That's a straw man argument. The assumption is that some people will contribute lower quality content if using a pseudonym than if using their real name. Yes there are people who will contribute high quality content only under pseudonym, and losing them is the price Quora will have to pay. You can of course contribute anonymously to Quora.
ig1 16y ago
Facebook have exactly the same policy. They have an automate filter which they run names through and if it doesn't pass they require some form of id.
agnesberthelot 16y ago
As the admin of the forum of my own website, I understand the Quora admin's wariness for "oddly-named" users (definition of which is highly subjective, BTW). However, in my opinion, one is innocent until proven guilty ... so unless they provide proof that they are spammers, as admin I don't think I should do anything. But of course I'm sure Quora would have this covered in their Terms of Service details. As we can see, the result is bad PR and the site gives a very unfriendly image.
lesterbuck 16y ago
Last June I signed up for Quora, but it rejected my full name. I use "III" in my full name, and their form validation rejected it. Apparently I had committed the pre-crime of trying to enter my name in ALL CAPS. That put me in a foul mood, and I sent a testy email to Quora about a site that was so super focused on real names couldn't validate a common suffix. I received a very quick, professional reply from some programmer that he was sorry and they had already fixed that. So I am a Quora member, but I don't pay much attention to the site.
ck2 16y ago
Real names on a forever-archived internet that follows you around for life is possibly the stupidest policy I've ever heard of. What prevents someone from signing up in your name and posting something that would certainly prevent you from getting hired in the future? Also, what if someone "internet famous" or even worse "real life famous" wants to contribute something? There has to be a better way to control trolls. If Quora is going to demand ID, they need to ask ID from EVERYONE before their account is active to prevent fake Steve Jobs, etc. not selectively. Otherwise I recommend you sign up using your dog's first name or your elderly neighbor's name.
- kj12345 16y ago
  Great point - the implied equivalance between posting on the internet with a real name and having a real-world conversation is wrong. Posting on an archived system available to everyone is more like writing an editorial or giving a speech, something which many are uncomfortable with.
  - lhnz 16y ago
    ...Those sound just like the kind of person that they should want using their service. If you're unhappy with something being attributed to you years later then you're probably writing crap. (I do think that people might just pick 'real sounding' names though. They should try to make this the exception though...)
- joe_the_user 16y ago
  Indeed, I think what those pushing real names for their site don't get is that the closer the site gets to appearing to only use real names, the more dangerous and potentially damaging it becomes for the real name users. A random site where anyone can post as anyone else has some plausible deniability. A site where everyone is really themselves has less deniability. A fake facebook account claiming to be X thus is more damaging to X than a totally random website talking about X. And that's not even getting to the dumb stuff you say on your own...
- treyp 16y ago
  In their defense, they do allow anonymous posting of questions and answers. So if it's anonymity you're worried about...
bluecobalt 16y ago
I just tried to login to Quora and discovered that I, Blue Cobalt (true legal name), have indeed been blocked as well. Quelle surprise! I understand their tired reasoning, but don't agree with arbitrarily forcing your users to do anything. I've messaged them and am awaiting a reply.
- waqf 16y ago
  With respect, that's an awesome name.
FirstHopSystems 16y ago
I also loved the fact that I get a message from a Anon admin telling me the rules state everyone has to use their real name. Coming from an Anon admin..if it's automated at least tell me the host name.....
hncommenter13 16y ago
I live in the United States, and these double-names do sometimes occur. For example, I met someone named Daniel Daniel, who is a very successful analyst at an investment bank in New York. (I'm not him, but the name stuck with me when I met him in business school.) You can find him on LinkedIn (along with other similarly named folks): http://www.linkedin.com/in/danieldaniel http://www.linkedin.com/in/danieldaniel
yalogin 16y ago
I don't understand why Quora is given attention at all. I asked a question about the efficacy of various ad providers on facebook and got no replies. The surprising part was the question got about 4 views. I got better replies on reddit. Its just one question but given that its popular amond the tech and valley insiders I expected to get more views at least.
mkramlich 16y ago
I don't mind if people use fake names to protect identity. I don't like astroturfing and sock puppet accounts. The conflict between trying to allow the former and prevent the latter is at the heart of Quora's dilemma on this issue.
Sniffnoy 16y ago
You know, they could just explicitly ask people to use their real names ("We recommend you use your real name" or something similar). If all the first few users do this it might catch on. Works on MathOverflow, though admittedly that probably has as much to do with the content of the site itself as the recommendation. But prohibiting pseudonymy on the internet is just stupid.
georgieporgie 16y ago
I signed up on Quora the other day and spent some time poking around. It appears to be a synergy of Yahoo Answers and the Lake Wobegone Effect.

148 points by achompas 16y ago

I registered with Quora using my legal name as documented on credit cards, my library card, my utilities bills and my drivers license. My account was blocked, and I was asked to register with my "proper" name. So far my replies have been ignored. So I've left.

Vivtek 16y ago
Your parents should have known not to name you "Rider". What were they thinking? It's bad enough you're saddled with the surname "Giraffes".
- RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
  <grin> I should've known someone would make the comment. Oh no - wait - I did. But no, I didn't try to register with RiderOfGiraffes. That would just be silly.
- user24 16y ago
  > saddled...
- pyre 16y ago
  Giraffes isn't his surname. It's his hometown. ;-)
deleted 16y ago
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nika 16y ago
I registered with a completely fake name, though it sounds like a real name rather than a handle. I have to wonder about a mother who names her kid "Quora" anyway, and I would like to point out that Quora isn't giving us her last name, yet she demands that we give her ours? I learned my lesson with facebook, which promised privacy and then years later made the data public. That is the last site that got my real name. I've changed my name on facebook several times to completely obviously fake names, and while they claim that you have to use your real name and they claim to review them, no repercussions. I'm only keeping the account while I go back, and delete old status updates a few months at a time anyway. And really, no website actually needs it. Trying to fight it is silly, as there is no mechanism whereby you can authenticate identity online. Faxing a passport doesn't even work, unless the business is tied into the government network, and if it is, then other businesses are as well and fake passports become easier.
- yuhong 16y ago
  "I learned my lesson with facebook, which promised privacy and then years later made the data public." FYI, it is not that simple.
- rexf 16y ago
  > I registered with a completely fake name, though it sounds like a real name rather than a handle. This is why their real name policy is flawed. A real name that sounds fake gets flagged as fake. A fake name that sounds real does not get flagged. The process is completely subjective as to what sounds real. Requiring ID is one way to prove/disprove it, but checking scanned IDs does not scale well.
- T-hawk 16y ago
  > Trying to fight it is silly, as there is no mechanism whereby you can authenticate identity online. Handling fake names or other identifiers is like handling software piracy. You can't prevent it and technology can't prevent it. The pathological cases will do their thing anyway. The best you can do is make it sufficiently inconvenient that the bulk of users will simply go the legit route and the bulk of clowns will go away. Incurring some false positives is a cost, which Quora has chosen to bear. This is what government itself does for issuing its own IDs. They just have the power for "sufficiently inconvenient" to include criminal charges.
  - pyre 16y ago
    > Incurring some false positives is a cost, which Quora > has chosen to bear. The issue here is that you cannot claim to be an 'international' company just because anyone can sign up. If you discriminate against people whose names are 'weird' just because they don't conform to your cultural norms, then all you're doing is exposing your ignorance to the international community that you're hoping to embrace. Stating that Quora is 'open to entire world, so long as they conform to American cultural ideals' is just confirming that stereotype of the American business man that shows up in a foreign country to do business, expects everything to work like it does in America and views all local culture/customs to be 'inferior' because things work so much better in America. On top of that Quora doesn't seem to even have a consistent policy, or so it appears from their communications. The first 'your name appears to be fake' communication implies that the user just needs to say, "Yup, that's my real name," and all will be well. The further communications relay the message that once you've been determined to be 'fake' you need to provide a government id.
jackowayed 16y ago
Related idea I got: one "easy" (nonmanual, not super-invasive) way for them verify names would be to do a credit card verification, which would verify that they had a credit card in that name. But people probably wouldn't be too keen to give their credit card info to a free site just for "name verification".
- hkuo 16y ago
  This works for people with credit cards, but there would need to be another layer for people without credit cards.
- bkmartin 16y ago
  People do it for "free" prOn sites all the time for "age" verification purposes. If the perceived value is there, then people will do it.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- gergles 16y ago
  Credit cards don't verify names anyway, it's not even an option to get back from the authorization network. You can use a credit card to verify addresses, but not names.
- sidek 16y ago
  Three words: Gift credit cards.
  - jackowayed 16y ago
    But most people aren't dedicated enough to trolling to get a gift credit card so they can verify the fake name they want to troll with.
  - ja2ke 16y ago
    Given that my name is "Valued Customer," that influx of gift card users would probably fuck my chances of ever getting a validated Quora account.

dabent 16y ago

I know from experience the difficulties an unusual name can bring, but Quora hasn't called me out just yet. I value their desire to build an authentic community, but other sites have grown without resorting to this sort of tactic. Fakes eventually are known based on their posts. Speaking of fakes, Flickr cofounder Caterina Fake has had all kinds of problems due to her (real) last name: http://caterina.net/archive/001011.html http://caterina.net/archive/001011.html At worst, I've been asked if I was "one of them foreigners" by a landlord years back.

deleted 16y ago
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nika 16y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by an "authentic community". I have many friends on social networks whom I've never met in real life and whose names I have no knowledge of, but they are real people, and the relationship is authentic, based on our interactions. They are not fake, they are simply anonymous. Further, by having some anonymity, I can say things that I otherwise would not be comfortable saying. This is important on a site where the purpose is to answer questions. Is it better to get a vague question or to have an answer that fails to reveal critical information because this information might make a business associate look bad? Or would it be better to be able to say X attempted to do Y because they believed Z, and I thought Z true, but Z turned out to be W and so Y caused a Q. X is a good entity, they just made a mistake here, so beware of this kind of error if you do business with X.
- yuhong 16y ago
  Quora already has an anonymous mode for that. Just click "Make Anon" when you need it.
  - benologist 16y ago
    That's probably not really anonymous - Quora almost certainly knows you posted it still even if they don't display that you did.

jister 16y ago

Why is Quora given so much attention?

staunch 16y ago
Because the tech bloggers all use and like it.
whatrocks 16y ago
You should ask them.
l0nwlf 16y ago
Because the quality of answers are good.
FiReaNG3L 16y ago
Facebook mafia, thats about it.
joblessjunkie 16y ago
Ditto -- it seems that I read about Quora on HN nearly every day, but I've never actually been taken to the site for any real purpose, or seen any of its actual content linked on HN.
cletus 16y ago
+1 To me, Quora is almost the ultimate non-story. There's nothing technically noteworthy about the idea or the platform. The only thing Quora has done well (and they have done really well at this) is to get Valley insiders to use it. Another way to put this is that it's a bubble story: journalists and Valleywags think it's much bigger than it is because all the other people in the same bubble talk about it. Outside of SV/SF, nobody really knows nor cares. It's a bit like the AT&T-iPhone story. Sure it sucks in SF/NY (it really does) but journalists and bloggers seem incapable or uninterested in considering that these two cities are representative of the whole country. Last year Quora got funding at a staggering $86M [1] (this sounds like post-money). It's Yahoo Answers meets Facebook, which just so happens to have an insider audience that won't necessarily translate more broadly. Frankly, I'd sell before people catch on. [1]: http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/28/quora-has-the-magic-benchmark-invests-at-86-million-valuation/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/28/quora-has-the-magic-benchma...

deleted 16y ago

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byrneseyeview 16y ago

Real names are part of Quora's premise. They can afford to reject people who make that hard to pull off. If they'd been founded in another country, they'd presumably have the same problem with some standard American names, but since they weren't, Hasan Hasan's argument falls a little flat. If he needs to use it, he can go by a middle name. I go by my middle name, because I share my first name with my father. No TechCrunch drama required.

achompas 16y ago
Respectful discussion is also a part of Quora's premise. It's hard to foster that discussion, though, when you've started giving users the runaround because their name doesn't look right to you.
metageek 16y ago
You're assuming he has more than two names.

user24 16y ago

Looks like Quora could do with reading patio11's myths about names: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...

patio11 16y ago
This puts me in mind of my credit card, whose database believes I am "Patrick McKenzie" and whose web tier enjoys throwing a "That input wasn't written in kana, please try again" on the "sign up for online access" page. When I called the credit card company to complain, they told me that they would need a government issued ID certifying to my name in kana prior to changing their DB record. The government will happily issue me an ID, and indeed legally mandate that I carry it everywhere, but only for my name exactly as it appears on my passport. US passports don't include kana? "Not our problem." Strangely enough, the small town bank that I do business with has been absurdly solicitous about this, and when a similar string comparison caused a bill payment to fail, the manager added a note to the file saying that dishonoring any bill directed to a foreign client at our branch office would henceforth require his written approval. It's just the gigantic megacorp bank in Tokyo which hasn't figured out that foreigners exist yet.
- dedward 16y ago
  Somewhat understandable. Most passports that use different alphabets also tend to have romanized names on them to prevent this type of thing at immigration points.... do you think US Banks and tellers accept names in kana or kanji, cyrillic, greek, arabic, etc?
  - redthrowaway 16y ago
    When you're processing online payments, you're rather incompetent if you can't handle UTF-8.
- jmaygarden 16y ago
  My first name is "Judge" and it gets dropped as a title every once in a while. I had a credit card issued with my middle initial as my first name. When I called to have it changed to my real name they insisted that documentation be provided to prove it. My immediate response was to cancel the credit card because creating a new account had a lower barrier to entry than correcting information in an existing account. Likewise, this was a "megacorp" bank.

georgecmu 16y ago

After all, unless you’re Cher or Sirhan Sirhan, nobody has the same first and last name. One of our top managers' name is Herman Herman. 10 years ago or so, he was working next to a guy, whose name was Martin Martin. Of course, Martin Herman was lurking nearby as well.

awj 16y ago
...sounds like you worked in a 70's sitcom.
Luc 16y ago
Names in Egypt often follow this pattern, because the second name is actually the father's given name. So you get combinations like Youssef Youssef or Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
SerpentJoe 16y ago
I'd say go find Herman Martin but it's probably like McDonald's Monopoly where you get the first three and the fourth is extremely rare.
metageek 16y ago
Was Martin Martin from Germany? Here at ITA, we used to (before my time) have someone of that name. He was born in Germany, but naturalized in the US; his last name was too difficult for many Americans, so he gave up and had it changed to match his first name, so it'd be easy to say and remember.
pushingbits 16y ago
One of my teachers in high school was named Rafael Rafael. Grew up somewhere in Indonesia (I think) and never got a last name. So they just duplicated his first name.
- sharkey 16y ago
  The uni department I worked at once had a student called "Daniel". He was on a engineering scholarship from somewhere in remote Africa and had never needed another name. He was rather rueful that nobody had told him to make one up when he applied for his passport, because it caused him all kinds of difficulty. He was all kinds of things on different bits of paper: "Daniel Daniel", "Daniel -" and, memorably, "Daniel Dash".

citricsquid 16y ago

I have no problem with displaying my full name (and address etc) but something irks me about forcing my full name to be displayed, it should be optional, if I want to use a username (which more people will recognise me by) why shouldn't I?

ig1 16y ago
No-one's forcing you to use Quora, Quora's goal is to maintain high-quality and one of the strategies that they're using to do that is require people use their real name. It's a perfectly legitimate strategy.
- latortuga 16y ago
  Asserting that something is true doesn't make it so. I can say that you look like a ham sandwich but that doesn't mean you look like a ham sandwich. There are a number of reasons that it isn't a legitimate strategy. This story illustrates a few of them, namely that false positives and false negatives are hard to detect, and that alone is reason enough to reject the idea. Perhaps it is useful to examine the reason for identifying people. If it is, as you say, to maintain high quality, I would ask upon what causal basis that that conclusion rests; I submit StackOverflow and HN as examples of entities that show real names not to be a requirement for high quality discourse.

cshenoy 16y ago

Why not require them to be on LinkedIn and verify through that? Or verify through Facebook? Granted there are trolls on both but it's better than requiring ppl to send a scan of their gov't ID.

benologist 16y ago
Facebook requires government ids too. My fake account is locked till I submit one.
- notahacker 16y ago
  Facebook has Hasan Hasans, and even a Hasan Hasan Hasan. My guess is their flags for fake accounts are a little better.

statictype 16y ago

Ugh. I can respect their desire to force people to use real names in order to keep discourse civil and intelligent. But that's an awfully big rathole to crawl into. See also: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...

vaksel 16y ago

personally I find this is very retarded...faking your name is easy. All you have to do is make a new Facebook account with a real sounding name, and noone would be the wiser. So whats the point of wasting valuable resources enforcing something this stupid?

pcorsaro 16y ago

The whole thing is ridiculous, but I want to point out something else the editor said that bugged me and seemed unnecessary: "...in order to use a site approximately as useful to the world as Yahoo! Answers." Do people really think it's that bad? I really like Quora for the most part and think it's way more useful than Yahoo! Answers.

localhost3000 16y ago
as it stands, Yahoo! Answers is currently far more useful to the world than Quora. This may change as Quora grows and builds a broader audience, but in terms of value delivered to # of people, it isn't even close...

BarkMore 16y ago

This is amusing. Quora might think that my real name is fake, but that's not a problem because I registered with a very ordinary sounding fake name.

buro9 16y ago

On the website I run, I ask for an email address during signup. All I do to check whether someone appears to be real is to use Rapportive in Gmail and see whether they appear on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. http://rapportive.com/ http://rapportive.com/ I don't force users to use real names, I think there's a real benefit in allowing people to use aliases. Rapportive allows me to really quickly grok whether the alias has an underlying real ID in terms of fighting spam and trolls. It's hardly a fool proof technique, but it answers the questions 9 times out of 10 which removes any need for me to create obstacles for my users to jump through. PS: Interesting aside: I really loathe Facebook due to a personal incident in my life that occurred on there. Rapportive were kind enough to understand this and then to write an exception into their codebase such that it never prompts me to connect with Facebook. Talk about customer service.

ars 16y ago
What do you do for people who don't have an account on those? Or people like me who use a different email address for every site?
- buro9 16y ago
  Look at other things like your IP, user agent, etc. Spammers, things done by scripts... They give themselves away really easily. All I want is an obstacle enough that I know people aren't spamming and that if they troll they understand that it will reflect on their reputation. Do I need a real id? Nope. And clearly Quora don't either as they don't require over 99% of users verify their real id. It's just a spam prevention policy and helps cut down on trolls as it will (or has risk that it will) reflect on you. It's really not a good thing to start applying onerous terms and your users.

deleted 16y ago

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rbranson 16y ago

This is really lame, but parents, do heed: if at all possible, try to name your kids something normal. This is going to get much worse WAY before it gets better. Obviously you can't predict all cultural phenomenons (for instance, if you named your child "Ken Ryu" before Street Fighter hit the shelves) and you shouldn't do it just to please ignorant folks or know where your child will be living in the future ("Kumar??? What is that, like 5 O's and 2 U's?"), but don't intentionally make life difficult on your children just to make yourself laugh or to fulfill some nerd agenda.

Qz 16y ago
My name got me made fun of constantly as a kid, but if someone asked me if I would have rather been named something else, the answer is an immediate and resolute no. These days all I get is compliments for my name. Yesterday a new person at my tai chi class heard my name as I was showing up and started shouting out loud how awesome it was, then asked if we could switch (she had a pretty unique name as well). Weird names get you made fun of for maybe 8-10 years, but then the rest of your life is filled with compliments. Think of it as an investment.
frossie 16y ago
try to name your kids something normal Normal to whom? Aside from cultural issues, and aside from the notion that people should name the children to make up for the lack of a proper personal identification system on the Internet, that ship has long sailed. Have a look at your local paper's birth announcements - there aren't many Dicks and Janes anymore. Even older names have "creative" spellings that render them practically unrecognisable.
- rbranson 16y ago
  Normality can be statistically proven. If using an abnormal name is not something that will benefit a child, what is the purpose of it, other than satisfying a sick urge to imprint the parents personality on the child? Would you only buy your boy pink clothes or name him "Elizabeth"? You are choosing for your child, and they deserve a name which is as neutral of a canvas as you can provide for them.

naner 16y ago

Targeting "fake-looking" names is useless if anyone can register with a realistic fake name with no scrutiny.

cj 16y ago

Facebook identifies my friend's first name as fake and forces her to spell it wrong. The name is Sushi. Her name is currently set as Sushii to compensate.

yuhong 16y ago

Personally, I use my real name almost everywhere, but if I was running a website, I would not go so far to require it.

EGreg 16y ago

If their approach lets fake but English sounding names go through, then they shouldn't discriminate against other names, period. If Quora wants people to use their real names, they should require them to link their facebook account -- and these days, even that is a poor guarantee of real names. Let's face it, people are striking back at the "real names" thing by altering their names on facebook, because you never know what they're going to make public by default next.

humj 16y ago

So what if you were lady gaga or something? Would she not be allowed to use quora without her real name? Or are fake names okay if you have celebrity status?

joubert 16y ago
My first thought was it would prevent Madonna, Moon Unit Zappa, Pope John Paul II from registering as well.

Supermighty 16y ago

I love that I can use different pseudo-anonymous handles on different websites. It gives me a chance to experiment and explore different facets of my life and personality that I wouldn't feel comfortable doing if that exploration were tied to my real name. Maybe Quora isn't the place for experimenting with identity. The Internet used to be a place where we were able to freely express ourselves. Increasingly it seems that we can only express ourselves if it's congruent with our IRL selves.

eik3_de 16y ago

I knew a guy in college that had the name "Harrison". He was from south-east asia. In fact, he told me that from where he comes from, they don't have such thing as first and last name, his name was really just "Harrison". But since no one in the "western world" could handle that, he used Harrison both as first and last name. Lessons for me: things might be very different on the other side of the globe. Don't try to arrogantly believe you can judge wether things can be true or not from your limited experience and imagination.

pbhjpbhj 16y ago
>me that from where he comes from, they don't have such thing as first and last name, his name was really just "Harrison" People that don't have family names often use patronyms and the "[W]estern world" seems to cope just fine. Harrison ben Harry, Harrison Harrinpoika, Harrison Fitzharry¹ or what have you. --- 1 - all mean "Harrison son of Harry"

hkuo 16y ago

One need only look at the quality of comments on a site like Hacker News to see that "real names" is not a requirement for quality and valuable discussion. No doubt, real names would be an effective aspect to quality content, but if the system of verification is flawed, it's meaningless.

u48998 16y ago

Quora is an idiot. Internet should have its own revolution to get rid of such idiots from the wire.

awj 16y ago

So ... Quora doesn't want legitimate users? It's a pretty sad troll that can't figure out they need to make "real-sounding" names. Basically you're filtering out the twelve year olds that will try to write 'fuck' and 'shitcock' everywhere. That can be accomplished more effectively with some simple analysis on post content. Instead, you're really only making life hard on legitimate users that don't match your dramatically underinformed notion of a "proper" name.

jerf 16y ago

Godwined in the title. Wanting to be able to conclusively identify someone you are doing business with (as Quora is) is not being a Nazi, it's a foundation of civil society. It may be a bad choice by Quora for other reasons, they may be handling it poorly, you may disagree with them even if it is otherwise perfect, but it is certainly their right to decide with whom they are doing business and with what level of reliability in the identification. They aren't Nazis for that. Unless they're actually collecting accurate identities for the purposes of more efficiently murdering entire ethnicities at some point in the future? (And I mean, killing them, not merely "killing their account on Quora". I think the Nazis would be a smidge less reviled if they had merely cut the Jews out of participation in public fora.) And this article takes other political potshots for no good reason... "birtherist"? I think birtherism is silly too, but what's that potshot doing in the middle of this article?

jat850 16y ago
I either read an entirely different article than you or my Search feature is broken in Google Chrome. I found 0 instances of "Nazi" or "bitherist" in the TC article linked. Have I missed something?
- RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
  With regards the Nazi reference, I suspect he's picking up on the "Ihre Papiere, Bitte" and the reference to jack-boots. The language, the phrase and the attire are all associated with the Nazi regime, although he never mentioned it by name. With regards the "birther-ist" comment, the article does say: "I think Quora’s ridiculous, birther-ist requirements for a “government-issued ID” are a little bit rough, ... " (edited for clarity)
  - jat850 16y ago
    Good catch. I didn't notice the picture accompanying the article until after I'd posted, and I searched for "bitherist" rather than "birther". Apologies to OP for overlooking their meaning.
  - 16y ago

codeglomeration 16y ago

Maybe it's part of their long term strategy. For now just require validation of fake sounding names. But as soon as you have critical mass, roll out the requirement for everybody to validate their names with valid IDs in order to continue using the system. That would make sense for the current state or requiring IDs for fake names. Then they can go to advertisers or just blatantly sell the data if it doesn't work out. Regardless if their intentions are good or bad, this data in the wrong hands can cause nuisance.

ANH 16y ago

I registered real first name, real last initial and they demanded I change in a couple of emails. Sorry, not gonna do it for a site I'm still on the fence about. I promptly deactivated my account and don't plan to return.

ElbertF 16y ago
They asked me if my last name was really "Gs". I told them yes and didn't hear from them after that.

sfphotoarts 16y ago

To be fair to Quora, it is their service and not some tax -payer funded government program, so they can accept whomever they choose on their site. These are their accounts to loose and I don't see why this is even news, or a blog post. So what if you can't come up with a name that sounds real. For a q&a site these guys certainly get a lot of HN attention.

ddkrone 16y ago

What exactly are they trying to accomplish with this policy? The stackexchange network of sites has "fake" names all over and yet they do business just fine.

Macha 16y ago

The assumption that those not wishing to disclose a real name have dishonest intentions (and that is what it comes down to), irks me. Personally, I prefer pseudonomity online. But apart from me, let's pick a more famous example or someone who was pseudonomynous online. Would Quora have allowed _why?

ig1 16y ago
That's a straw man argument. The assumption is that some people will contribute lower quality content if using a pseudonym than if using their real name. Yes there are people who will contribute high quality content only under pseudonym, and losing them is the price Quora will have to pay. You can of course contribute anonymously to Quora.

ig1 16y ago

Facebook have exactly the same policy. They have an automate filter which they run names through and if it doesn't pass they require some form of id.

agnesberthelot 16y ago

As the admin of the forum of my own website, I understand the Quora admin's wariness for "oddly-named" users (definition of which is highly subjective, BTW). However, in my opinion, one is innocent until proven guilty ... so unless they provide proof that they are spammers, as admin I don't think I should do anything. But of course I'm sure Quora would have this covered in their Terms of Service details. As we can see, the result is bad PR and the site gives a very unfriendly image.

lesterbuck 16y ago

Last June I signed up for Quora, but it rejected my full name. I use "III" in my full name, and their form validation rejected it. Apparently I had committed the pre-crime of trying to enter my name in ALL CAPS. That put me in a foul mood, and I sent a testy email to Quora about a site that was so super focused on real names couldn't validate a common suffix. I received a very quick, professional reply from some programmer that he was sorry and they had already fixed that. So I am a Quora member, but I don't pay much attention to the site.

ck2 16y ago

Real names on a forever-archived internet that follows you around for life is possibly the stupidest policy I've ever heard of. What prevents someone from signing up in your name and posting something that would certainly prevent you from getting hired in the future? Also, what if someone "internet famous" or even worse "real life famous" wants to contribute something? There has to be a better way to control trolls. If Quora is going to demand ID, they need to ask ID from EVERYONE before their account is active to prevent fake Steve Jobs, etc. not selectively. Otherwise I recommend you sign up using your dog's first name or your elderly neighbor's name.

kj12345 16y ago
Great point - the implied equivalance between posting on the internet with a real name and having a real-world conversation is wrong. Posting on an archived system available to everyone is more like writing an editorial or giving a speech, something which many are uncomfortable with.
- lhnz 16y ago
  ...Those sound just like the kind of person that they should want using their service. If you're unhappy with something being attributed to you years later then you're probably writing crap. (I do think that people might just pick 'real sounding' names though. They should try to make this the exception though...)
joe_the_user 16y ago
Indeed, I think what those pushing real names for their site don't get is that the closer the site gets to appearing to only use real names, the more dangerous and potentially damaging it becomes for the real name users. A random site where anyone can post as anyone else has some plausible deniability. A site where everyone is really themselves has less deniability. A fake facebook account claiming to be X thus is more damaging to X than a totally random website talking about X. And that's not even getting to the dumb stuff you say on your own...
treyp 16y ago
In their defense, they do allow anonymous posting of questions and answers. So if it's anonymity you're worried about...

bluecobalt 16y ago

I just tried to login to Quora and discovered that I, Blue Cobalt (true legal name), have indeed been blocked as well. Quelle surprise! I understand their tired reasoning, but don't agree with arbitrarily forcing your users to do anything. I've messaged them and am awaiting a reply.

waqf 16y ago
With respect, that's an awesome name.

FirstHopSystems 16y ago

I also loved the fact that I get a message from a Anon admin telling me the rules state everyone has to use their real name. Coming from an Anon admin..if it's automated at least tell me the host name.....

hncommenter13 16y ago

I live in the United States, and these double-names do sometimes occur. For example, I met someone named Daniel Daniel, who is a very successful analyst at an investment bank in New York. (I'm not him, but the name stuck with me when I met him in business school.) You can find him on LinkedIn (along with other similarly named folks): http://www.linkedin.com/in/danieldaniel http://www.linkedin.com/in/danieldaniel

yalogin 16y ago

I don't understand why Quora is given attention at all. I asked a question about the efficacy of various ad providers on facebook and got no replies. The surprising part was the question got about 4 views. I got better replies on reddit. Its just one question but given that its popular amond the tech and valley insiders I expected to get more views at least.

mkramlich 16y ago

I don't mind if people use fake names to protect identity. I don't like astroturfing and sock puppet accounts. The conflict between trying to allow the former and prevent the latter is at the heart of Quora's dilemma on this issue.

Sniffnoy 16y ago

You know, they could just explicitly ask people to use their real names ("We recommend you use your real name" or something similar). If all the first few users do this it might catch on. Works on MathOverflow, though admittedly that probably has as much to do with the content of the site itself as the recommendation. But prohibiting pseudonymy on the internet is just stupid.

georgieporgie 16y ago

I signed up on Quora the other day and spent some time poking around. It appears to be a synergy of Yahoo Answers and the Lake Wobegone Effect.