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"Non-Anglo-Saxon names will continue to be routinely flagged as fake" Please read through Yonatan Zunger's comments on the original post - in particular "Our n

"Non-Anglo-Saxon names will continue to be routinely flagged as fake" Please read through Yonatan Zunger's comments on the original post - in particular "Our name check is therefore looking, not for things that don’t look like “your” name, but for things which don’t look like names, period. In fact, we do not give a damn whether the name posted is “your” name or not: we will not challenge you on this basis, nor is there any mechanism for other users to cause you to be challenged for this." There was a lot of research done to understand what names "look like" around the world and for many different cultures. There was also work to make sure that the human review process had both reviewers in place from the various cultures and that there was an effective process in place to make sure that reviews were routed appropriately. "people who want a persistent identity unlinked to details that could expose them in real life be continue to be unable to use the service" Google+ will no longer require you to provide your real or legal name. Just something that looks like a name. Were you asking for something more?

hythloday 15y ago
Thanks for the explanation and for pointing out Yonatan Zunger's comments: I hadn't seen them when I made my post and they paint the new policy in a much more positive light. I understand that Google did a lot of research in designing the real names policy, and that there are culturally aware teams implementing them. I don't really understand how they determine what's a likely-looking name--even in English, there are a great number of naming cultures: I would imagine the name StJohn Fetherstonhaugh looks as unlikely to an American as Page Lane does to someone from England, but both are "real" names. Would they be routed to the same team? When you broaden this to the entire world, my confidence in Google's ability to do what is effectively a tedious customer service job falters, especially when you consider that the exact spelling of one's name can be a contentious issue in some parts of the world if one identifies as a particular ethnicity. What more would I like? I'd like Yonatan Zunger's explanation to be made official policy; I'd also like to know what would happen if I sign up as Fifi Trixibelle Honeyblossom Peaches Pixie Heavenly Hiranni Tigerlily[0] Harlow (not my real name, but equally obviously someone's real name, and thus "name-shaped"), and I'm flagged what recourse I have that doesn't involve changing my name on Google+. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Geldof#Personal_life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Geldof#Personal_life
- mvgoogler 15y ago
  Personally, I would love to see Yonatan's explanations be made more official. I don't know if there are any plans for that (I write code for a living, I'm not in PR :-) ) Yonatan has a great thread going on in his personal account where he is responding to questions from users. He is the primary architect of both G+ and the new policy. I would recommend reading through it and posting your questions there (https://plus.google.com/u/0/103389452828130864950/posts/YJbzDptWGQt https://plus.google.com/u/0/103389452828130864950/posts/YJbz...) I know that the team would appreciate real-world examples of names that are edge cases, or that would likely be false-positives in the current system. As far as how they determine what it means to be "name-shaped", I'll just copy one of Yonatan's responses. I really recommend reading through the thread. "OK, and now to answer the really damned tough question of "just how the heck do you define name-shapedness?" And I can't go in to too many of the technical details, but the zeroth-order answer is "using humans, boosted by computers." Humans look at names and flag things which look like they aren't names; anything which is flagged gets reviewed by lots more humans, cross-checked, vetted by people with cultural familiarity, etc. This process tries to err on the side of treating things as OK. (!) We also build up computer models to basically cache this and handle the "easy" cases automatically, since obviously having humans do everything doesn't scale. The goal is that most things which are marked as "not a name" are genuinely cases of something being meant as either a nickname or an organization; whenever the appeals process is triggered, and even more so whenever something passes an appeal, that's a sign that the first-stage check failed and we need to improve our rules. So then we can look at the pattern of appeals, see if there are classes of names which we are systematically getting wrong, and learn from this to improve the process and reduce the chance of someone being sent through it incorrectly."

hythloday 15y ago

Thanks for the explanation and for pointing out Yonatan Zunger's comments: I hadn't seen them when I made my post and they paint the new policy in a much more positive light. I understand that Google did a lot of research in designing the real names policy, and that there are culturally aware teams implementing them. I don't really understand how they determine what's a likely-looking name--even in English, there are a great number of naming cultures: I would imagine the name StJohn Fetherstonhaugh looks as unlikely to an American as Page Lane does to someone from England, but both are "real" names. Would they be routed to the same team? When you broaden this to the entire world, my confidence in Google's ability to do what is effectively a tedious customer service job falters, especially when you consider that the exact spelling of one's name can be a contentious issue in some parts of the world if one identifies as a particular ethnicity. What more would I like? I'd like Yonatan Zunger's explanation to be made official policy; I'd also like to know what would happen if I sign up as Fifi Trixibelle Honeyblossom Peaches Pixie Heavenly Hiranni Tigerlily[0] Harlow (not my real name, but equally obviously someone's real name, and thus "name-shaped"), and I'm flagged what recourse I have that doesn't involve changing my name on Google+. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Geldof#Personal_life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Geldof#Personal_life

mvgoogler 15y ago
Personally, I would love to see Yonatan's explanations be made more official. I don't know if there are any plans for that (I write code for a living, I'm not in PR :-) ) Yonatan has a great thread going on in his personal account where he is responding to questions from users. He is the primary architect of both G+ and the new policy. I would recommend reading through it and posting your questions there (https://plus.google.com/u/0/103389452828130864950/posts/YJbzDptWGQt https://plus.google.com/u/0/103389452828130864950/posts/YJbz...) I know that the team would appreciate real-world examples of names that are edge cases, or that would likely be false-positives in the current system. As far as how they determine what it means to be "name-shaped", I'll just copy one of Yonatan's responses. I really recommend reading through the thread. "OK, and now to answer the really damned tough question of "just how the heck do you define name-shapedness?" And I can't go in to too many of the technical details, but the zeroth-order answer is "using humans, boosted by computers." Humans look at names and flag things which look like they aren't names; anything which is flagged gets reviewed by lots more humans, cross-checked, vetted by people with cultural familiarity, etc. This process tries to err on the side of treating things as OK. (!) We also build up computer models to basically cache this and handle the "easy" cases automatically, since obviously having humans do everything doesn't scale. The goal is that most things which are marked as "not a name" are genuinely cases of something being meant as either a nickname or an organization; whenever the appeals process is triggered, and even more so whenever something passes an appeal, that's a sign that the first-stage check failed and we need to improve our rules. So then we can look at the pattern of appeals, see if there are classes of names which we are systematically getting wrong, and learn from this to improve the process and reduce the chance of someone being sent through it incorrectly."