All publication is a political act. All communication is propaganda. All art is pornography. All business is personal. All hail Eris. Vive les poissons rouges sauvages!
Stilgherrian really is my legal name. One given name, no surname. It’s on my passport, my Medicare card and all the nasty letters I get from my bank manager. It’s pronounced like this [MP3]. Most people call me “Stil” for short.
It’s not the name my parents gave me. It’s one I adopted when I was in my early 20s. I was, it must now be revealed, part of a nest of Dungeons and Dragons players at the University of Adelaide where one of the people was, like me, interested in linguistics. He coined the word “Stilgherrian” as a name for me — me personally, that is, not one of the game characters. It stuck, and for various reasons I decided to adopt it legally. It doesn’t mean anything, it was just intended to “sound right”.
This category includes posts about the problems I encounter when dealing with inflexible bureaucracies and computer systems — although as you’ll see I don’t write about it very often.
On Tuesday I did another radio interview about Google’s stupid names policy, as outlined in my expletive-filled blog post and an op-ed for ABC The Drum.
This time the conversation was with ABC 105.7 Darwin presenter Annie Gastin, in the context of the full range of unusual names. Quite fun.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 11:27 — 5.2MB)
The audio is of course ©2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but since they don’t usually post it online here it is.
Google’s disaster of a “real names” policy was the subject of today’s Patch Monday podcast. How could it not be, after my own experiences and the attention that scored globally?
Australian developer Kirrily “Skud” Robert, a former Google employee currently resident in San Francisco, has been compiling Google’s name failures, so she was a natural guest for the podcast.
You can listen below. But it’s probably better for my stats if you listen at ZDNet Australia or subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe in iTunes.
Please let me know what you think. Comments below. We accept audio comments too. Either Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.
There’s been a few developments this week in my battle with Google over my name. More communication. And more media coverage.
On 18 August I responded to Google’s boilerplate email thusly:
Hi folks,
My full, legal name is a mononym, “Stilgherrian”. It has been so for 30 years. This name has been used consistently throughout that time on every official document, in every credit line in print, on radio and on television, in everyday use… everywhere.
Dare I say it, a Google Search will soon reveal that.
My only photo ID is my passport, and I am unwilling to send a copy because I have security concerns.
I can’t edit my name in Google Profiles to match my “real” name, because it won’t let me leave the surname field blank.
How do we fix this?
Cheers,
Stilgherrian
Google’s reply arrived on 20 August.
My expletive-ridden blog post about Google’s fucked-up “real names” policy and their brain-dead implementation has gone global.
While my editor at Crikey commissioned an article, To Google, we are data fodder, and I am an unperson, the story was picked up by an American political blog and linked to by The Wall Street Journal.
The post has been viewed at least 6000 times, probably many more. So far.
I’ve just written a lengthy response to the 127 comments so far. I do think that people who say “It’s only a beta” and “It’s just a bug” and “Well it is a free service” and “What do you expect with a weird name?” have entirely missed the point.
That, too, will probably offend people.
And now my work here is done.
Please add your comments on the original post.
[Photo: Logo from Google Developer Day 2007 by meneame comunicacions, sl, used under a Creative Commons BY-SA license.]
[Stilgherrian writes: Oh dear. This post has generated a lot of interest. Thank you for that interest. But if you're visiting for the first time, I strongly suggest you also read my lengthy response to commenters and the fair warning before posting your own comment.]
I knew this would happen sooner or later. Google, a data mining company in the United States, has the ignorant arrogance to tell me, a citizen of Australia, that my name — my legal name — doesn’t fit their scheme for how names “should” work. Well fuck you, arseholes!
What’s worse, this is how they tell you.
They suspend your profile, tell you your name is wrong, and tell you to change it.
Your profile has been suspended.
It appears that the name you entered doesn’t comply with our Names Policy.
The Names Policy requires that you use the name that you are commonly referred to in real life in your profile. Nicknames, maiden names, and so on, should be entered in the Other Names section of the profile. Profiles are currently limited to individuals; we will be launching a profile for businesses and other entities later this year.
Your profile will be suspended until you do edit your name to comply with the Names Policy: you will not be able to make full use Google services that require an active profile, such as Google+, Buzz, Reader and Picasa. This will not prevent you from using other Google services, like Gmail.
We understand that Google+ and it’s [sic] Names Policy may not be for everyone at this time. We would hate to see you go, but if you choose to leave, make a copy of your Google+ data first. Then, click here to leave Google+.
Listen, Googlecunts. This name precisely fits your Names Policy.
I’m very pleased to see that someone else is attempting to solve my Script Challenge. Check the most recent comments. I’m still surprised that it remains unsolved after three years.
Ah yes! The Plan gently unfolds. My new business name Skank Media is now registered. A shame that the Office of Fair Trading has got my name wrong on the certificate — again.
I’ve decided that each weekend I’ll dig out an object or two from my more distant past and write about it. To kick things off, here’s a challenge which was originally created by the same chap who coined my name.
The text you can see in the image below (at least if you happen to be sighted) is in an unknown script. Your task is obvious, I think.
The only clues you have are that it’s a quote from a book by Ursula LeGuin and it’s nothing whatsoever to do with Tolkein.
Now originally I solved this in under 2 days, without the aid of computers or amphetamines. I reckon that in The Age of the Internet you can do better. I’ll negotiate a suitable prize for the first person who posts the solution.
I can’t log into St George Bank’s Internet banking right now — presumably it’s overloaded with people like me doing their 30 June thing. So instead I’ll continue the story of moving to Westpac.
After that initial meeting, the cards and PINs and other stuff duly arrived — and as usual the cards didn’t record my name correctly. Now I’m OK with that, having only one name is more than a little unusual. And besides, I’ve never found it useful getting angry when something’s a simple mistake. After all, you want people to help you, and berating them won’t increase their chances of fixing your problem.
So I popped into the local branch to get it sorted.
The staff were friendly and helpful. And they were confident they’d made the right changes to get it fixed. But alas, yesterday one of the replacement cards arrived, and it still had me listed as “Stilgherrian Stilgherrian”. Back to the drawing board…
The test now will be to see how Westpac deal with this. Stay tuned…
The Australian Business Register, who last week had problems getting my name right, emailed me yesterday:
Your legal name now shows correctly in the Australian Business Register.
And it does.
They didn’t say why it was possible so quickly when it was impossible only seven days earlier. Maybe their programmers burnt the candle at both ends across the long weekend.
Or maybe someone just RTFM.
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