It 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! Espec

It 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?