

104-Year-Old Woman Forced to Lie about Her Age on Facebook - laurent123456
http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/02/22/104-year-old-woman-forced-to-lie-about-her-age-on-facebook/?iid=obnetwork

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jmduke
I do some part-time work at a non-profit that, ultimately, does super-
international (30+ countries) surveys. As you might imagine, this results in a
massive database and my main duty is wrangling the data into a .csv-friendly
format.

One of the quick things we learned that "normalization" in the naive sense was
an exercise in idiocy.

Breaking names into 'first name' and 'last name'? Hah, right.

Breaking locations into 'country', 'state', and 'city'? Hah, right.

The big solution: don't constrain what someone types in. Constrain how you
work with it.

~~~
dbarlett
patio11's list of Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names:
[http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-
programmers-b...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-
believe-about-names/)

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MostAwesomeDude
Until patio11 amends this post to contain suggestions about doing things right
instead of merely telling people that they are doing it wrong, please stop
recommending it as reading material. Thanks.

~~~
micampe
You are unnecessarily harsh but I’ll help you anyway:
<http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-personal-names>

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defrost
Accurately and faithfully recording things as they are in the world often runs
afoul of the preconceptions of data monkeys.

The usual examples of things that sometimes just have to be correctly dealt
with are non specific gender [1], family trees with actual inbreeding and
cycles (omg; it's a graph not a tree :/) and flying about Fiji means you can
cross -179.99 to +179.99 and back again several times in an hour (oh shit, the
plane's upside down again :/)

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex> (Australian Passport database now
has M / F / X).

~~~
mikeash
There's a hilarious Stack Overflow thread about a guy whose family tree
software collided with an incestuous customer:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6163683/cycles-in-
family-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6163683/cycles-in-family-tree-
software)

If you go back far enough, beware February 30th, 1712. It was a real date in
some parts of the world, and somebody's great^n grandfather was no doubt born
on that day.

~~~
betterunix
"If you go back far enough, beware February 30th, 1712"

OK, my girlfriend and I looked it up. All I can say is this: experience
matters. These are not things they teach in school (not any school I have been
too, anyway).

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kristopolous
I claim I was born in 1910 on Facebook without any issues. I backdated my age
and then started posting pictures changing the dates to the 1910s and 1920s
(of things like me in period clothing standing next to older buildings during
the filming of an older film; with cars from the era parked out in front, a
fruit vendor on the side of the street, etc.)

This is because Facebook doesn't allow you to backdate prior to your birth -
they really don't understand personas at all.

If I want to post a picture of me buying a WW2 era newspaper from a paperboy
and claim it was taken in 1941 then why can't I?

It's high quality content that people enjoy (compared to someone posting a
picture of say, a hamburger) - isn't that what's going to make people continue
to have FB Time and not have tumblr Time - the quality of the content?

Youtube also has problems with this - I don't want my name, I want an invented
thematic identity; a character with its own soul. Thank you.

~~~
Turing_Machine
You are misunderstanding who is the customer and who is the product with
respect to Facebook.

Inaccurate information makes you less valuable to their actual customers
(i.e., advertisers).

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dancesdrunk
Is it just me or the title is a bit sensationalist? Surely they could done it
a bit better: "Facebook registration doesn't allow dates before x" - which is
somewhat understandable, and yes this does indeed force her to "lie" about her
age, but to make it on the Times with such an accusatory article makes me
question the motives/credibility of the author/reporter.

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sophacles
You know, at first I thought this was a lot fluffy for here, but, it is
amusing to see yet another case of a company that demands you use your real
info turning around and preventing just that. I almost hope facebook kicks her
off because of lying, just for the shitstorm it would raise.

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draftable
So she was born in 1908, but Facebook changes it to 1928, yet lists her as 99
years old? Something doesn't add up there... Sounds like some BS journalistic
license has been taken.

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danso
Given that Facebook doomsayers consider it "over" when FB loses the
teenage/hip crowd, perhaps this is a broken-by-design feature to keep the
elderly from making Facebook uncool. Kind of like a digital bouncer that keeps
the uncool people from taking valuable space in a crowded club.

(I'm kidding, though I wonder when digital services really will do this at
some point)

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ntumlin
You know a website's gone to the birds when they start letting people over the
age of 99 start joining.

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n3rdy
Especially when some cradle robber lies about only being 99.

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whyenot
I have an Excel spreadsheet with rainfall records dating back to the 1860s. It
turns out Excel does not accept dates before January 1, 1900 as valid, while
dates far, far into the future (up to December 31, 9999) are perfectly ok.
Nobody thought someone might want to enter a date before 1900? It's just
bizarre.

~~~
fivre
All time began some time around the civil war, so computers should reckon to
that: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS#Epoch_choice>

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KorvinSzanto
The best part is that they are "working to fix" this issue, no body cares.

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hnriot
I'm sure after all she's seen this really isn't going to ruin her day.

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gojomo
Even if not technically-required, I would advise centenarians to roll back
their reported age a few decades, anywhere it may be used to target ads. The
"meet other 100+ singles!" ads are really obnoxious.

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andrewcooke
O MI GOD THIS IS SO TERRRIBLE!!!11!! LIKE IF YOU AGREE.

