4 ms·
It's not pedantry when a significant proportion of people on Earth are affected by at least one of these falsehoods. Obviously it's very difficult to design a
by dwb 14y ago
It's not pedantry when a significant proportion of people on Earth are affected by at least one of these falsehoods.
Obviously it's very difficult to design a system that doesn't fall foul of any of these, but we could at least strive for better. Just having "first name" and "last name" fields is really quite culturally insensitive. It pretty much worked when only Americans and Western Europeans were using computers, but the online world is a lot bigger now.
A comment by the author gives examples of humans who don't have names, but certainly exist: "Someone born into slavery in the Sudan, a woman born in rural China, an American baby recovered after being born into a toilet, a feral child, an amnesiac, etc, etc."
It's not quite so important for a social network to deal with this, but a government system, for example, should be more rigorous. Whatever the system, if we can be more global in our attitude, so much the better.
- Cushman 14y ago> A comment by the author gives examples of humans who don't have names, but certainly exist: "Someone born into slavery in the Sudan, a woman born in rural China, an American baby recovered after being born into a toilet, a feral child, an amnesiac, etc, etc." I don't know if this is a peculiar idea, but in those circumstances perhaps a "Generate Name" button is the useful feature.
- makomk 14y agoI think that's effectively how this is handled at the moment.
- BerislavLopac 14y agoOnly if that name is intended to become official. If not, rather make sure that the field accepts a null value. ;-)
- Dylan16807 14y agoI'm not going to communicate with you by pointing. Stop being a special snowflake and come up with a name, even if it's local to the service. No null values. Your name can be 'null value' though if you like, win yourself some geek points.
- vacri 14y ago"an American baby recovered after being born into a toilet" Does anyone seriously believe that this person will go through life with no name? There are placeholder names for unidentified people, the baby will get one of these until someone takes authority for it and names it.
- WayneDB 14y agoIt is too pedantry, when at the end of the article you're suggesting that anyone is sub-genius for simply not caring about the same things that you might! Especially when a significant proportion of developers are not going to be adversely affected by most of these falsehoods (many of which are just the same assumption worded differently). "Obviously it's very difficult to design a system that doesn't fall foul of any of these, but we could at least strive for better." If your goal is to achieve some nebulous goal of being "better", then sure. Otherwise, please tell me exactly why am I wasting my time? There has to be a reason, for instance if I'm building a global system that actually cares about acquiring exact/full/legal names and every name you've ever had. "It's not quite so important for a social network to deal with this, but a government system" There you go. You almost hit the nail on the head, but again - if your government system is not concerned with collecting every data-point about the person's name, then why should it care?
- mst 14y agoHaving a full_name and a usual_referent_name would seem to work. full_name - Matt S. Trout usual_referent_name - Matt (for "normal" stuff) full_name - Matt S. Trout usual_referent_name - mst (for "geek" stuff) and, yes, if I'm registering with a site for both, I have to pick one. But at least no matter what my full name is that way I can enter it.
- vacri 14y agoIt's impossible to design around them, given that several of the items are mutually exclusive.