Discussion of Naming Policy

This thread is for discussion of the Naming Policy.

I think it's great! It makes JavaRanch much more professional. It is also nice to get to know fellow developers by their real names instead of "StudGuy" and "BunnyGal".
[ February 25, 2002: Message edited by: Thomas Paul ]

I agree with Thomas or Paul, whichever is his first name.

(jk Thomas)
I also think that by using your real name, your posts are more, how to say this, cleaner, nicer, truer, instead of a post that antagonizes kind of like one I read in the SCWCD forum about Sun dicounts, and the guy goes crazy over the policy. If that person had his/her full name on the post, I don't think they would have been that rude.
Mark

I think the naming policy contributes to the generally considerate tone of JavaRanch discussions. Please keep it. There are plenty of places to discuss stuff anonymously, or using self-selected titles.

I generally like formality. Keep the policy.
Out of curiosity, two questions:
Why this thread at this time guys?

What if my name really was John Wayne?
Regards, Guy

Like all.
Keep it up.

Axel

If you are really serious about being professional, then I must sadly criticize the Java Ranch logo - the one-eyed moose.
I have gotten serveral comments from coworkers about this site while at work. It does NOT present itself visually as a professional site when there is a cartoon picture of a moose with one eye on every page. And there is a fly buzzing around it too. Some people might find this cute, others might find it sick.
I'm just telling you that from experience with what other people in my office have said, it does NOT look professional. I think this is a bigger issue than the naming policy. People glancing over my shoulder don't notice the names of people, but they always notice that moose.

Originally posted by Guy Allard:
Why this thread at this time guys?

When we updated the software, we suddenly had a "displayed name" to deal with. This brought about an updated Naming Policy Page. Although this topic has been discussed many times in the past, we thought it would be good to have a centralized place (thread) to discuss it. Therefore, this thread is linked to the page and the page is linked to this thread.

Hello,
I, too, appreciate the aura of professionalism at this site that is enhanced by the Naming Policy.
Though this isn't the topic of this thread...
I haven't had any bad experiences regarding the Mouse Head. But wouldn't it be easy to have a button to make it disappear if that's how a user would prefer his or her configuration?

Originally posted by Rob Ross:
If you are really serious about being professional, then I must sadly criticize the Java Ranch logo - the one-eyed moose.

I think you might have a point there.

Just because we're trying to be professional doesn't mean we have to be boring!

I like the moose head as well.
And to reiterate plus stay OT, the naming policy is fine.
Regards, Guy

I like the Naming Policy - I hate having to enforce it.
I like the Moose - I scroll down fast to hide him at work.

I agree the naming policy is in line with the goal of making this a professional site.
I never said I didn't like the moose, I said it was unprofessional. If you have to scroll down to hide the moose, as I do, that should be a sign that the moose goes against stated goal of this site being a place where employers feel ok letting their employees use it at work.

Had an urge to continue talking moose, so instead of distracting from this topic I started a new thread:
Is the moose unprofessional?

Pauline
www.hyjackersanonymous.org

[ February 27, 2002: Message edited by: Pauline McNamara ]

JavaRanch has very quickly become a daily visit.Thanks to all who have made JavaRanch
The only item that I found confusing was the prompt on the form for entering a public name.
....Like most users,I did not read the instructions.It seems like alot of effort goes into having new users correct their invalid public name.I think this is wasted effort and should be corrected.
Here is a solution I came up with:
http://www21.brinkster.com/sturman/default.htm

I saw this earlier in another thread, but your link doesn't seem to be working. I get "This page cannot be found." In any event, we've been working on such a page ourselves recently, getting it to integrate smoothly with the existing registration, and I believe it's nearly ready for release. Thanks for your interest.

I did 2 submits of the form with correct results using login ids of sturman74a and sturman74b.
The it can't be found Respone on the submit response is INTENDED.I removed the action attribute of the form,otherwise the form would get processed.

But I can't even see the form in the first place. There's no "submit response" button or anything else to be seen. Perhaps permissions aren't configured to allow outside users to view the site?

The link works for me.I am not sure why you can't access the page.Will someone else try the link and let me know if they have a problem....it is a msft(asp) site

This should be the same as above:
http://www21.brinkster.com/sturman/default.htm

Hi All,
The right time to enforce the naming policy is during registration and not after it.Any one who does not follow the naming policy should not be allowed to be a registered member.This also simplifies the work of moderators.
This is my view ,ofcourse.

I am big fan of javaranch site. I am a daily visitor to this site.What I hate is the logo. Cant u find any other??

Please change it.
Good Luck to javaranch site.

Charlie,
The link works fine for me today and it worked fine for me yesterday.

Originally posted by Rob Ross:
If you are really serious about being professional, then I must sadly criticize the Java Ranch logo - the one-eyed moose.

I think thats right b/c when i first visit the site i think that i've come on a wrong site.
But when i win two books after two posts i start liking the one-eyed moose.

The naming policy is fine

Take a look at http://test.javaranch.com/register.jsp

If I don't type anything and try to submit ... I get 4 alerts in a row. This can be irritating for some users.
I think it is better if we get only one big alert message higlighting all ther errors made. I saw this kind of an alert somewhere in IBM site ( I don't remember the link ???)
OR
My favourite ... At the first user error, show an alert message for that field ONLY and focus back to that field. Don't validate the rest for the time being. We always follow this in most of our WEB projects.

Originally posted by Paul Wheaton:
Take a look at http://test.javaranch.com/register.jsp

I just got a FINAL WARNING

in the Job Discussions forum for not following the naming policy.
I registered with JavaRanch in Oct 2000 with a display name 'J Ash' (close to real name), which I later changed to 'Ashok M' (almost real name).
I was surprised to get a final warning from Jessica about display name after almost 2 years. I didn't really wanted to display my 'short' lastname, so I was hiding it behind a 'M'.
Not that I am unhappy about the warning, and I agree its the right thing to do, but was just wondering how come this final warning after 2 years :roll: Also I missed my first or second warnings somewhere

I warned you on the 30th of May:
http://saloon.javaranch.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=24&t=016074
It looks like most of your posts are in MD which has no naming requirement.

What if someone really has a name of "Michael Bolton" or "Candid Calamity"?

Ashok, if you like a shorter name, you can do like the famous "Maha Anna". I myself have been thinking for a while to change my public name from "Francisco A Guimaraes" to "Frank Guim" or something like that...
Francisco

Doh! I missed that one, Thomas! Sorry for that!

Francisco, I guess that is the right thing to do. And I have a feeling that many in here are not using their actual name. Especially since we post here in forums like Job Discussion forum, that too bitching about Project Managers. He too might be a JavaRancher, who knows

One of the drawbacks of a naming policy is that people are not given enough rope to instantly shoot themselves in the foot, and drown in the resulting overflow.
Thus on the discussion site I run you can call yourself anything you like (you need to have a live email address to collect your password) but apart from that any name goes.
Thus someone gave themselves the name Adolph Hitler, and plenty of people came to the conclusion that they did not want to get into conversation with Adolph. Instant foot shooting or what

.
Marcus

You can create multiple id's if you like. Your real name for clever answers you provide, a fake name (maybe a co-worker you don't really like) for those really stupid questions you need to ask

, another fake name (maybe your boss's name) for job hunting, etc.
Only kidding!!!

I know i�m repeating myself, but some days ago I saw a greenhorn with the name of "super co". Ok, that was a fake, but what if someone really has a name of "Candid Calamity" or something that sounds fake, but it was just the fruit of lousy imagination? Could someone answer me?
Thanks,
Francisco

Just to support Francisco's point.

Well, now this is my official ID.
Believe it or not, I know some one who has a friend whose actaul name is 'Les Bian'. I am not kidding.

Francisco- well, we deal with them on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes we'll ask "is that your real name?" It depends how plausible the name sounds, and how insistent the person is that the name is real. For specific examples, "Candid Calamity" is too obviously fake - if someone has that as their real name, they need a name change in the real world, not just JavaRanch.

"Les Bian" I would probably ignore unless someone made an issue of it. Since they did, and since it's obvious from context in this case that it's not a real name, I have blocked the account. If it had been a real name, I might have suggested modifying "Les" to "Lester", or inserting a middle initial, so that it broke the "joke" and still functioned as a real name.

I don't want to put my real name there by unknown reason, somehow.

Thanks for your answer Jim. I wasn�t looking for a loop hole or anything like that, it was just something that crossed my mind.I really don�t encourage people using public names like "Def Ense" or something like that, and I completely agree with the naming policy.Again, thanks for your concern Jim.
Francisco

Another thing, have you guys thought on the solution suggested by Charlie Sturman? It seems to me that it would ease a lot the registration process.
Francisco

Folks have thought about it, folks have put effort into it - however it is always more complicated than that. One way or the other it is a hack.
We JUST upgraded to this version of UBB a few months ago, so if we had done it before - we would be doing it yet again.
If you look down in this forum you will see that there has been alot of effort put into migrating to JIVE. That is turning out to be WAY more painful than you would think.
Needless to say in the middle of that - adding a little hack is not a big priority.
Maybe eventually.