
Quora To Oddly-Named Users: Papers Please - achompas
http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/14/quora-to-oddly-named-users-papers-please/
======
RiderOfGiraffes
I registered with Quora using my legal name as documented on credit cards, my
library card, my utilities bills and my drivers license. My account was
blocked, and I was asked to register with my "proper" name. So far my replies
have been ignored.

So I've left.

~~~
jackowayed
Related idea I got: one "easy" (nonmanual, not super-invasive) way for them
verify names would be to do a credit card verification, which would verify
that they had a credit card in that name.

But people probably wouldn't be too keen to give their credit card info to a
free site just for "name verification".

~~~
sidek
Three words: Gift credit cards.

~~~
ja2ke
Given that my name is "Valued Customer," that influx of gift card users would
probably fuck my chances of ever getting a validated Quora account.

------
ck2
Real names on a forever-archived internet that follows you around for life is
possibly the stupidest policy I've ever heard of.

What prevents someone from signing up in your name and posting something that
would certainly prevent you from getting hired in the future?

Also, what if someone "internet famous" or even worse "real life famous" wants
to contribute something?

There has to be a better way to control trolls.

If Quora is going to demand ID, they need to ask ID from EVERYONE before their
account is active to prevent fake Steve Jobs, etc. not selectively.

Otherwise I recommend you sign up using your dog's first name or your elderly
neighbor's name.

~~~
kj12345
Great point - the implied equivalance between posting on the internet with a
real name and having a real-world conversation is wrong. Posting on an
archived system available to everyone is more like writing an editorial or
giving a speech, something which many are uncomfortable with.

~~~
lhnz
...Those sound just like the kind of person that they should want using their
service. If you're unhappy with something being attributed to you years later
then you're probably writing crap.

(I do think that people might just pick 'real sounding' names though. They
should try to make this the exception though...)

------
user24
Looks like Quora could do with reading patio11's myths about names:
[http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-
programmers-b...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-
believe-about-names/)

~~~
patio11
This puts me in mind of my credit card, whose database believes I am "Patrick
McKenzie" and whose web tier enjoys throwing a "That input wasn't written in
kana, please try again" on the "sign up for online access" page. When I called
the credit card company to complain, they told me that they would need a
government issued ID certifying to my name in kana prior to changing their DB
record. The government will happily issue me an ID, and indeed legally mandate
that I carry it everywhere, but only for my name exactly as it appears on my
passport. US passports don't include kana? "Not our problem."

Strangely enough, the small town bank that I do business with has been
absurdly solicitous about this, and when a similar string comparison caused a
bill payment to fail, the manager added a note to the file saying that
dishonoring any bill directed to a foreign client at our branch office would
henceforth require his written approval. It's just the gigantic megacorp bank
in Tokyo which hasn't figured out that foreigners exist yet.

~~~
dedward
Somewhat understandable. Most passports that use different alphabets also tend
to have romanized names on them to prevent this type of thing at immigration
points.... do you think US Banks and tellers accept names in kana or kanji,
cyrillic, greek, arabic, etc?

~~~
redthrowaway
When you're processing online payments, you're rather incompetent if you can't
handle UTF-8.

------
dabent
I know from experience the difficulties an unusual name can bring, but Quora
hasn't called me out just yet. I value their desire to build an authentic
community, but other sites have grown without resorting to this sort of
tactic. Fakes eventually are known based on their posts.

Speaking of fakes, Flickr cofounder Caterina Fake has had all kinds of
problems due to her (real) last name:
<http://caterina.net/archive/001011.html> At worst, I've been asked if I was
"one of them foreigners" by a landlord years back.

~~~
nika
I'm not sure what you mean by an "authentic community". I have many friends on
social networks whom I've never met in real life and whose names I have no
knowledge of, but they are real people, and the relationship is authentic,
based on our interactions.

They are not fake, they are simply anonymous.

Further, by having some anonymity, I can say things that I otherwise would not
be comfortable saying. This is important on a site where the purpose is to
answer questions.

Is it better to get a vague question or to have an answer that fails to reveal
critical information because this information might make a business associate
look bad? Or would it be better to be able to say X attempted to do Y because
they believed Z, and I thought Z true, but Z turned out to be W and so Y
caused a Q. X is a good entity, they just made a mistake here, so beware of
this kind of error if you do business with X.

~~~
yuhong
Quora already has an anonymous mode for that. Just click "Make Anon" when you
need it.

~~~
benologist
That's probably not _really_ anonymous - Quora almost certainly knows you
posted it still even if they don't _display_ that you did.

~~~
hornokplease
Correct, Quora does know that you posted it, however other users won't be able
to know:

[http://www.quora.com/How-anonymous-are-anonymous-
questions-i...](http://www.quora.com/How-anonymous-are-anonymous-questions-in-
Quora)

~~~
ekanes
For now. It would be a mistake to assume their system is so secure now (and
forever into the future) that the data can't be found, or simply leaked
inadvertently by Quora.

~~~
benologist
Or forced to be handed over with a court order.

It's a very false-anonymity, even by internet standards.

------
jister
Why is Quora given so much attention?

~~~
cletus
+1

To me, Quora is almost the ultimate non-story. There's nothing technically
noteworthy about the idea or the platform.

The only thing Quora has done well (and they have done really well at this) is
to get Valley insiders to use it.

Another way to put this is that it's a bubble story: journalists and
Valleywags think it's much bigger than it is because all the other people in
the same bubble talk about it. Outside of SV/SF, nobody really knows nor
cares.

It's a bit like the AT&T-iPhone story. Sure it sucks in SF/NY (it really does)
but journalists and bloggers seem incapable or uninterested in considering
that these two cities are representative of the whole country.

Last year Quora got funding at a staggering $86M [1] (this sounds like post-
money). It's Yahoo Answers meets Facebook, which just so happens to have an
insider audience that won't necessarily translate more broadly. Frankly, I'd
sell before people catch on.

[1]: [http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/28/quora-has-the-magic-
benchma...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/28/quora-has-the-magic-benchmark-
invests-at-86-million-valuation/)

~~~
DavidSJ
_To me, Quora is almost the ultimate non-story. There's nothing technically
noteworthy about the idea or the platform.

The only thing Quora has done well (and they have done really well at this) is
to get Valley insiders to use it._

Replace "Quora" with "Hacker News" and you'll see how valuable getting Valley
insiders to use it can be. It's the community.

~~~
metageek
Upvote, but there is a large difference in degree. Nobody's paying $86M for
Hacker News.

~~~
DavidSJ
Hacker News doesn't have a monetization strategy. Can you imagine it with ads?
I can't. Quora I can, though.

------
georgecmu
_After all, unless you’re Cher or Sirhan Sirhan, nobody has the same first and
last name._

One of our top managers' name is Herman Herman. 10 years ago or so, he was
working next to a guy, whose name was Martin Martin. Of course, Martin Herman
was lurking nearby as well.

~~~
pushingbits
One of my teachers in high school was named Rafael Rafael.

Grew up somewhere in Indonesia (I think) and never got a last name. So they
just duplicated his first name.

~~~
sharkey
The uni department I worked at once had a student called "Daniel". He was on a
engineering scholarship from somewhere in remote Africa and had never needed
another name. He was rather rueful that nobody had told him to make one up
when he applied for his passport, because it caused him all kinds of
difficulty. He was all kinds of things on different bits of paper: "Daniel
Daniel", "Daniel -" and, memorably, "Daniel Dash".

------
buro9
On the website I run, I ask for an email address during signup.

All I do to check whether someone appears to be real is to use Rapportive in
Gmail and see whether they appear on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

<http://rapportive.com/>

I don't force users to use real names, I think there's a real benefit in
allowing people to use aliases. Rapportive allows me to really quickly grok
whether the alias has an underlying real ID in terms of fighting spam and
trolls.

It's hardly a fool proof technique, but it answers the questions 9 times out
of 10 which removes any need for me to create obstacles for my users to jump
through.

PS: Interesting aside: I really loathe Facebook due to a personal incident in
my life that occurred on there. Rapportive were kind enough to understand this
and then to write an exception into their codebase such that it never prompts
me to connect with Facebook. Talk about customer service.

~~~
ars
What do you do for people who don't have an account on those?

Or people like me who use a different email address for every site?

~~~
buro9
Look at other things like your IP, user agent, etc.

Spammers, things done by scripts... They give themselves away really easily.
All I want is an obstacle enough that I know people aren't spamming and that
if they troll they understand that it will reflect on their reputation.

Do I _need_ a real id? Nope. And clearly Quora don't either as they don't
require over 99% of users verify their real id. It's just a spam prevention
policy and helps cut down on trolls as it will (or has risk that it will)
reflect on you.

It's really not a good thing to start applying onerous terms and your users.

------
BarkMore
This is amusing. Quora might think that my real name is fake, but that's not a
problem because I registered with a very ordinary sounding fake name.

------
hkuo
One need only look at the quality of comments on a site like Hacker News to
see that "real names" is not a requirement for quality and valuable
discussion.

No doubt, real names would be an effective aspect to quality content, but if
the system of verification is flawed, it's meaningless.

------
naner
Targeting "fake-looking" names is useless if anyone can register with a
realistic fake name with no scrutiny.

------
eik3_de
I knew a guy in college that had the name "Harrison". He was from south-east
asia. In fact, he told me that from where he comes from, they don't have such
thing as first and last name, his name was really just "Harrison". But since
no one in the "western world" could handle that, he used Harrison both as
first and last name.

Lessons for me: things might be very different on the other side of the globe.
Don't try to arrogantly believe you can judge wether things can be true or not
from your limited experience and imagination.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>me that from where he comes from, they don't have such thing as first and
last name, his name was really just "Harrison"

People that don't have family names often use patronyms and the "[W]estern
world" seems to cope just fine.

Harrison ben Harry, Harrison Harrinpoika, Harrison Fitzharry¹ or what have
you.

\---

1 - all mean "Harrison son of Harry"

------
awj
So ... Quora doesn't want legitimate users?

It's a pretty sad troll that can't figure out they need to make "real-
sounding" names. Basically you're filtering out the twelve year olds that will
try to write 'fuck' and 'shitcock' everywhere. That can be accomplished more
effectively with some simple analysis on post content.

Instead, you're really only making life hard on legitimate users that don't
match your dramatically underinformed notion of a "proper" name.

------
statictype
Ugh. I can respect their desire to force people to use real names in order to
keep discourse civil and intelligent.

But that's an awfully big rathole to crawl into.

See also: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-
programmers-b...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-
believe-about-names/)

------
lesterbuck
Last June I signed up for Quora, but it rejected my full name. I use "III" in
my full name, and their form validation rejected it. Apparently I had
committed the pre-crime of trying to enter my name in ALL CAPS. That put me in
a foul mood, and I sent a testy email to Quora about a site that was so super
focused on real names couldn't validate a common suffix. I received a very
quick, professional reply from some programmer that he was sorry and they had
already fixed that. So I am a Quora member, but I don't pay much attention to
the site.

------
citricsquid
I have no problem with displaying my full name (and address etc) but something
irks me about _forcing_ my full name to be displayed, it should be optional,
if I want to use a username (which more people will recognise me by) why
shouldn't I?

~~~
ig1
No-one's forcing you to use Quora, Quora's goal is to maintain high-quality
and one of the strategies that they're using to do that is require people use
their real name. It's a perfectly legitimate strategy.

~~~
latortuga
Asserting that something is true doesn't make it so. I can say that you look
like a ham sandwich but that doesn't mean you look like a ham sandwich. There
are a number of reasons that it isn't a legitimate strategy. This story
illustrates a few of them, namely that false positives and false negatives are
hard to detect, and that alone is reason enough to reject the idea.

Perhaps it is useful to examine the reason for identifying people. If it is,
as you say, to maintain high quality, I would ask upon what causal basis that
that conclusion rests; I submit StackOverflow and HN as examples of entities
that show real names not to be a requirement for high quality discourse.

------
EGreg
If their approach lets fake but English sounding names go through, then they
shouldn't discriminate against other names, period.

If Quora wants people to use their real names, they should require them to
link their facebook account -- and these days, even that is a poor guarantee
of real names. Let's face it, people are striking back at the "real names"
thing by altering their names on facebook, because you never know what they're
going to make public by default next.

------
Macha
The assumption that those not wishing to disclose a real name have dishonest
intentions (and that is what it comes down to), irks me. Personally, I prefer
pseudonomity online. But apart from me, let's pick a more famous example or
someone who was pseudonomynous online.

Would Quora have allowed _why?

~~~
ig1
That's a straw man argument.

The assumption is that some people will contribute lower quality content if
using a pseudonym than if using their real name. Yes there are people who will
contribute high quality content only under pseudonym, and losing them is the
price Quora will have to pay.

You can of course contribute anonymously to Quora.

------
jerf
Godwined in the title. Wanting to be able to conclusively identify someone you
are doing business with (as Quora is) is not being a Nazi, it's a _foundation
of civil society_. It may be a bad choice by Quora for other reasons, they may
be handling it poorly, you may _disagree_ with them even if it is otherwise
perfect, but it is certainly their right to decide with whom they are doing
business and with what level of reliability in the identification. They aren't
_Nazis_ for that. Unless they're actually collecting accurate identities for
the purposes of more efficiently murdering entire ethnicities at some point in
the future? (And I mean, _killing_ them, not merely "killing their account on
Quora". I think the Nazis would be a smidge less reviled if they had merely
cut the Jews out of participation in public fora.)

And this article takes other political potshots for no good reason...
"birtherist"? I think birtherism is silly too, but what's that potshot doing
in the middle of this article?

~~~
jat850
I either read an entirely different article than you or my Search feature is
broken in Google Chrome.

I found 0 instances of "Nazi" or "bitherist" in the TC article linked.

Have I missed something?

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
With regards the Nazi reference, I suspect he's picking up on the "Ihre
Papiere, Bitte" and the reference to jack-boots. The language, the phrase and
the attire are all associated with the Nazi regime, although he never
mentioned it by name.

With regards the "birther-ist" comment, the article does say:

    
    
        "I think Quora’s ridiculous, birther-ist requirements
         for a “government-issued ID” are a little bit rough,
         ... "
    

(edited for clarity)

~~~
cpach
I thought it was a reference to East Germany rather than Nazi Germany...?

~~~
darklajid
Hard to say, but a good point. As someone from Germany this phrase is not
really connected to either of these two special regimes. It's more a general
phrase, rarely still in use (for example for completely different scenarios,
since the literal translation is harmless). I think of police and an annoyance
if I read that.

Hey, for me this is probably closer to Orwell than to historical reference. I
do have to admit that the picture is provocative and stupid though.

------
pcorsaro
The whole thing is ridiculous, but I want to point out something else the
editor said that bugged me and seemed unnecessary: "...in order to use a site
approximately as useful to the world as Yahoo! Answers."

Do people really think it's that bad? I really like Quora for the most part
and think it's way more useful than Yahoo! Answers.

~~~
localhost3000
as it stands, Yahoo! Answers is currently far more useful to _the world_ than
Quora. This may change as Quora grows and builds a broader audience, but in
terms of value delivered to # of people, it isn't even close...

------
humj
So what if you were lady gaga or something? Would she not be allowed to use
quora without her real name? Or are fake names okay if you have celebrity
status?

~~~
joubert
My first thought was it would prevent Madonna, Moon Unit Zappa, Pope John Paul
II from registering as well.

------
cj
Facebook identifies my friend's first name as fake and forces her to spell it
wrong. The name is Sushi.

Her name is currently set as Sushii to compensate.

------
ANH
I registered real first name, real last initial and they demanded I change in
a couple of emails. Sorry, not gonna do it for a site I'm still on the fence
about. I promptly deactivated my account and don't plan to return.

~~~
ElbertF
They asked me if my last name was really "Gs". I told them yes and didn't hear
from them after that.

------
FirstHopSystems
I also loved the fact that I get a message from a Anon admin telling me the
rules state everyone has to use their real name. Coming from an Anon admin..if
it's automated at least tell me the host name.....

------
Supermighty
I love that I can use different pseudo-anonymous handles on different
websites.

It gives me a chance to experiment and explore different facets of my life and
personality that I wouldn't feel comfortable doing if that exploration were
tied to my real name.

Maybe Quora isn't the place for experimenting with identity.

The Internet used to be a place where we were able to freely express
ourselves. Increasingly it seems that we can only express ourselves if it's
congruent with our IRL selves.

------
hncommenter13
I live in the United States, and these double-names do sometimes occur. For
example, I met someone named Daniel Daniel, who is a very successful analyst
at an investment bank in New York. (I'm not him, but the name stuck with me
when I met him in business school.)

You can find him on LinkedIn (along with other similarly named folks):
<http://www.linkedin.com/in/danieldaniel>

------
yalogin
I don't understand why Quora is given attention at all. I asked a question
about the efficacy of various ad providers on facebook and got no replies. The
surprising part was the question got about 4 views. I got better replies on
reddit. Its just one question but given that its popular amond the tech and
valley insiders I expected to get more views at least.

------
bluecobalt
I just tried to login to Quora and discovered that I, Blue Cobalt (true legal
name), have indeed been blocked as well. Quelle surprise!

I understand their tired reasoning, but don't agree with arbitrarily forcing
your users to do anything.

I've messaged them and am awaiting a reply.

~~~
waqf
With respect, that's an awesome name.

------
vaksel
personally I find this is very retarded...faking your name is easy.

All you have to do is make a new Facebook account with a real sounding name,
and noone would be the wiser.

So whats the point of wasting valuable resources enforcing something this
stupid?

------
agnesberthelot
As the admin of the forum of my own website, I understand the Quora admin's
wariness for "oddly-named" users (definition of which is highly subjective,
BTW). However, in my opinion, one is innocent until proven guilty ... so
unless they provide proof that they are spammers, as admin I don't think I
should do anything. But of course I'm sure Quora would have this covered in
their Terms of Service details. As we can see, the result is bad PR and the
site gives a very unfriendly image.

------
codeglomeration
Maybe it's part of their long term strategy. For now just require validation
of fake sounding names. But as soon as you have critical mass, roll out the
requirement for everybody to validate their names with valid IDs in order to
continue using the system. That would make sense for the current state or
requiring IDs for fake names.

Then they can go to advertisers or just blatantly sell the data if it doesn't
work out.

Regardless if their intentions are good or bad, this data in the wrong hands
can cause nuisance.

------
Sniffnoy
You know, they could just explicitly _ask_ people to use their real names ("We
recommend you use your real name" or something similar). If all the first few
users do this it might catch on. Works on MathOverflow, though admittedly that
probably has as much to do with the content of the site itself as the
recommendation. But prohibiting pseudonymy on the internet is just stupid.

------
yuhong
Personally, I use my real name almost everywhere, but if I was running a
website, I would not go so far to require it.

------
cshenoy
Why not require them to be on LinkedIn and verify through that? Or verify
through Facebook? Granted there are trolls on both but it's better than
requiring ppl to send a scan of their gov't ID.

~~~
benologist
Facebook requires government ids too. My fake account is locked till I submit
one.

~~~
notahacker
Facebook has Hasan Hasans, and even a Hasan Hasan Hasan. My guess is their
flags for fake accounts are a little better.

------
ig1
Facebook have exactly the same policy. They have an automate filter which they
run names through and if it doesn't pass they require some form of id.

------
georgieporgie
I signed up on Quora the other day and spent some time poking around. It
appears to be a synergy of Yahoo Answers and the Lake Wobegone Effect.

------
mkramlich
I don't mind if people use fake names to protect identity. I don't like
astroturfing and sock puppet accounts. The conflict between trying to allow
the former and prevent the latter is at the heart of Quora's dilemma on this
issue.

------
ddkrone
What exactly are they trying to accomplish with this policy? The stackexchange
network of sites has "fake" names all over and yet they do business just fine.

------
u48998
Quora is an idiot. Internet should have its own revolution to get rid of such
idiots from the wire.

------
sfphotoarts
To be fair to Quora, it is their service and not some tax -payer funded
government program, so they can accept whomever they choose on their site.

These are their accounts to loose and I don't see why this is even news, or a
blog post. So what if you can't come up with a name that sounds real.

For a q&a site these guys certainly get a lot of HN attention.

------
rbranson
This is really lame, but parents, do heed: if at all possible, try to name
your kids something normal. This is going to get much worse WAY before it gets
better.

Obviously you can't predict all cultural phenomenons (for instance, if you
named your child "Ken Ryu" before Street Fighter hit the shelves) and you
shouldn't do it just to please ignorant folks or know where your child will be
living in the future ("Kumar??? What is that, like 5 O's and 2 U's?"), but
don't intentionally make life difficult on your children just to make yourself
laugh or to fulfill some nerd agenda.

~~~
frossie
_try to name your kids something normal_

Normal to whom?

Aside from cultural issues, and aside from the notion that people should name
the children to make up for the lack of a proper personal identification
system on the Internet, that ship has long sailed. Have a look at your local
paper's birth announcements - there aren't many Dicks and Janes anymore. Even
older names have "creative" spellings that render them practically
unrecognisable.

~~~
rbranson
Normality can be statistically proven. If using an abnormal name is not
something that will benefit a child, what is the purpose of it, other than
satisfying a sick urge to imprint the parents personality on the child?

Would you only buy your boy pink clothes or name him "Elizabeth"? You are
choosing for your child, and they deserve a name which is as neutral of a
canvas as you can provide for them.

------
byrneseyeview
Real names are part of Quora's premise. They can afford to reject people who
make that hard to pull off. If they'd been founded in another country, they'd
presumably have the same problem with some standard American names, but since
they _weren't_ , Hasan Hasan's argument falls a little flat.

If he needs to use it, he can go by a middle name. _I_ go by my middle name,
because I share my first name with my father. No TechCrunch drama required.

~~~
achompas
Respectful discussion is also a part of Quora's premise. It's hard to foster
that discussion, though, when you've started giving users the runaround
because their name doesn't look right to you.

