Infotrope

Google (used to) have a controversial strict "real name" policy on G+ and even very aggressively shut down accounts that had "fake looking" names, despite these people having said names. It discriminated against people who had (legal) Mononyms (single name) which is actually common in some cultures. They also didn't allow "unusual characters" in names. They asked for proof of name for shut down accounts and sometimes that proof wasn't good enough for them. More info here including the weird things that triggered the auto flagging of profiles, and what shut down accounts couldn't do: http://infotrope.net/2011/08/04/google-plus-names-policy-explained/ From the link above: If you change your profile name, the following things seem to trigger the automatic flagging system: Mononymity, i.e. having only one name (and having just a dot, or similar, in the “last name” field). “Unusual characters” Actually unusual characters, like a heart symbol (❤). Punctuation marks, including quotation marks, parentheses, and possibly even hyphens and apostrophes. Unusual capitalisation (including capitals appearing within a name, as in McWhatever) Spaces in either part of your name, for instance “Marie Claire” as a first name. Name using more than one character set, such as a name which uses the Latin character set for their first name and the Chinese character set for their last name. Certain words, possibly including profanity, names of famous…

I wonder why women are so unwilling to contribute gratis to the world's informational commons? I used to think the reason women didn't contribute to open source was simply a lack of relevant skills - programmers are primarily not women. But Wikipedia exhibits a similar disparity, and I seriously doubt there is a skill gap in writing neutral point of view articles on every topic. The data on wikipedia strongly suggests my skills hypothesis is wrong. An interesting empirical question: do women contribute to open source proportionately to their involvement in programming for pay? A quick google search finds weak evidence [1] that they do not: http://www.oscon.com/oscon2009/public/schedule/detail/10173 http://infotrope.net/2009/07/25/standing-out-in-the-crowd-my-oscon-key… If not, then that might indicate a more general phenomenon: women are less willing [2] to contribute (gratis, at least) to the informational commons than men. It's an interesting question, and I'd love to see more data/speculation. [1] This is the only primary source I've found. A number of other secondary sources cite this one. [2] Wikipedia demonstrates the issue is not skill. Women's contributions to Facebook strongly suggest the issue is not free time. The ATUS also suggests time is not a factor - women have about as much free time as men (men spend 8.1 hours/day on work related, household and care providing, women spend 7.85 hours/day). http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t08.htm

Two years ago. http://infotrope.net/2012/10/29/no-i-still-dont-want-to-work-for-googl…

Unless you are uniquely valuable, you will undoubtedly go through a standard hiring process. Expect to not be hired for your "own job" -- it's not yours any more, it's theirs. Seriously. For most people at an acquisition, this is the end of the road. They get a couple of weeks or months and then they're gone. Go look at what happened with Skud. She didn't fit their idea of an engineer, so she got a "fixed term", no bonus, and in July that was it. She was out. http://infotrope.net/2011/07/21/a-note-to-google-recruiters/ Also, look up what happened with AppJet/EtherPad and Wave. Some of it is right here on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2320172

They don't accept "the name most people know you by" either unless you're special enough. Look at Skud. http://infotrope.net/2011/07/22/ive-been-suspended-from-google-plus/

http://infotrope.net/2011/07/24/more-comments-on-google-plus-and-names… says "As far as I know, people are not losing access to all their Google services simply for using a name that Google doesn’t like. I have not yet heard of a single documentable case of this."

Skud observed (http://infotrope.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/plus06.png) that she "can’t use Google Takeout to export [her] profile and stream" after having been suspended herself: http://infotrope.net/2011/07/22/ive-been-suspended-from-google-plus/

Here's a couple of presentations which address that question: * http://webchick.net/files/women-in-floss.pdf * http://infotrope.net/blog/2009/07/25/standing-out-in-the-crowd-my-osco…

Last summer at OSCON Kirrily Robert gave a keynote which discussed gender and open source projects. The keynote itself was interesting (I only read about it from slides - didn't see it), and an O'Reilly Radar write-up about it led to a long and varied set of comments about "booth babes" and girls hired/invited to socialize at parties. For anyone interested, here's some links: http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/07/oscon-standing-out-in-the-crow.html http://infotrope.net/blog/2009/07/25/standing-out-in-the-crowd-my-osco…

(disclaimer: I work for Google, and dislike the Google+ names policy) In this case, it's not a demand; the user has already entered a Google+ name, and Google is offering to show that name on the user's YouTube account. > Supose I film my cat in my living room showing also the nice > HiFi installation behind it. If it is published under my > name, it would be like publishing my address on the HiFi. That's ridiculous. Unless you're also posting your address in the video description, it's practically impossible for a viewer to match a name (even your legal name) to your physical location. The concern here is about privacy, not physical security. Thinking up unrealistic danger scenarios is not productive. > If as a teenager I film and publish a party where I wouldn't > be at my advantage, I don't want that my name is associate > to it forever. > > I must be able to reset my Internet image and reputation. > Especially for young people. Google is already very > reluctant to remove references on demand. Currently, the idea of interacting with the web through multiple disposable identities is constrained to nerds. I believe that as time goes on, and the privacy implications of a single identity become widely apparent, the majority of users (especially younger users) will learn to use multiple identities. You ask for the ability to "reset" an identity, but this is impossible. You can't un-break an egg. Everything posted to the internet is public and…

Except that only works if you're famous, there have already been dozens of examples of people whose online identity (and even offline) is mostly accessed through their pseudonym and who got restricted or banned from G+ for using that pseudonym. Violet Blue (from TFA) is one (and, you know, not only is it her "official real name" she's given two techtalks at Mountain View), Doctor Popular an other one[2], Skud[0] yet an other one, and he listed a bunch of other accounts suspended for a number of name-related reasons including pen names, adding pseudonyms to your real name or somebody at google not liking your real name[1] (the latter being VB's issue but she was far from the only one). And of course, being banned from G+ for using your real name is one thing, but it also partially or completely lock you out of other, unrelated Google services (Reader, Picasa, Data Liberation, your Google profile, potentially GMail and Google Chat). G+ is a death trap. [0] http://infotrope.net/2011/07/22/ive-been-suspended-from-google-plus/ [1] http://infotrope.net/2011/07/25/preliminary-results-of-my-survey-of-su… [2] http://www.docpop.org/2011/08/googles-antisocial-behavior/