4 ms·

A friend of mine reshared that post on G+ yesterday and I left this comment there: "nymwars" is a big complicated thing that has far outgrown my ability to kee

A friend of mine reshared that post on G+ yesterday and I left this comment there: "nymwars" is a big complicated thing that has far outgrown my ability to keep track of the nuances, so I don't understand what this means for my personal pet feature (showing different names to different people), but it's encouraging to hear that there is raucous debate inside Google. I still think that the strongest argument for pseudonyms is that a system that doesn't handle them is Wrong, in the same way that "everything can be losslessly converted to ASCII" is wrong, or "an accurate map of a geographical area can be drawn on a flat surface" is wrong. Pseudonyms aren't a feature you can decide whether to support or not, they're part of the problem that you're trying to solve.

grourk 15y ago
Huh?
Aglet 15y ago
Are you saying that everything cannot be losslessly converted to ASCII?
- thristian 15y ago
  You might claim that everything can be losslessly converted to ASCII by applying, say, base64, but I would claim what you lose in that situation is readability. When I wrote that, I was mostly thinking about systems that assume it is always safe to replace "é" with "e", for example.
InclinedPlane 15y ago
The worst part is that google+ does support pseudonyms... if you're rich or famous enough. Personally I thought google was better than that.
- starwed 15y ago
  That's not what OP means... Your point is that google allows famous folk to use their RL pseudonym as their primary ID on google+. What thristian means is that the system itself needs to allow a single account to present multiple nyms, depending on context.
  - InclinedPlane 15y ago
    That's only part of the problem. The core problem is that google doesn't allow pseudonyms at all (even a single pseudonym across all circles) unless you happen to be famous enough, regardless of legal identity. It's a double standard.

grourk 15y ago

Huh?

Aglet 15y ago

Are you saying that everything cannot be losslessly converted to ASCII?

thristian 15y ago
You might claim that everything can be losslessly converted to ASCII by applying, say, base64, but I would claim what you lose in that situation is readability. When I wrote that, I was mostly thinking about systems that assume it is always safe to replace "é" with "e", for example.

InclinedPlane 15y ago

The worst part is that google+ does support pseudonyms... if you're rich or famous enough. Personally I thought google was better than that.

starwed 15y ago
That's not what OP means... Your point is that google allows famous folk to use their RL pseudonym as their primary ID on google+. What thristian means is that the system itself needs to allow a single account to present multiple nyms, depending on context.
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  That's only part of the problem. The core problem is that google doesn't allow pseudonyms at all (even a single pseudonym across all circles) unless you happen to be famous enough, regardless of legal identity. It's a double standard.