7 ms·

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" any

by 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.
  - T-hawk 16y ago
    > If you discriminate against people whose names are 'weird' I'm curious why this issue triggers a knee-jerk response of "that's discrimination". Seems to me that Quora may just perceive that it's not a worthwhile use of customer-service time and resources to deal with edge cases in output from their name approval algorithm. "Fax in your ID" allows a remedy with a standardized procedure and minimal resources spent on their part. Keep in mind what a small population this really is. You need the intersection of three sets: "rejected name", "bona fide applicant not a scammer/clown", and "unable or unwilling to access a scanner like by getting oneself to a Kinko's". It's quite plausible that this set of corner cases is sufficiently small as to simply not be worth Quora's time to handle. Quora is not a government with an obligation to serve everybody. Of course it sucks for those who happen to fall into that set, but the overall perspective is that those are small points in a large sea of data. Never assume malice where incompetence will suffice. This includes incompetence by willful neglect in favor of other priorities.
    - pyre 16y ago

by nika 16y ago

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.
- T-hawk 16y ago
  > If you discriminate against people whose names are 'weird' I'm curious why this issue triggers a knee-jerk response of "that's discrimination". Seems to me that Quora may just perceive that it's not a worthwhile use of customer-service time and resources to deal with edge cases in output from their name approval algorithm. "Fax in your ID" allows a remedy with a standardized procedure and minimal resources spent on their part. Keep in mind what a small population this really is. You need the intersection of three sets: "rejected name", "bona fide applicant not a scammer/clown", and "unable or unwilling to access a scanner like by getting oneself to a Kinko's". It's quite plausible that this set of corner cases is sufficiently small as to simply not be worth Quora's time to handle. Quora is not a government with an obligation to serve everybody. Of course it sucks for those who happen to fall into that set, but the overall perspective is that those are small points in a large sea of data. Never assume malice where incompetence will suffice. This includes incompetence by willful neglect in favor of other priorities.
  - pyre 16y ago