Discussion of Naming Policy

[Jamie Robertson]

[ rant ]you know, I just don't get it. Paul W has 2 easy rules to follow while on his site: 1. be nice
2. the naming convention
it doesn't seem that hard to me to follow?? There are plenty of other sites out there that allow you to not be nice and/or use "David Bowie","c_sharp_sux_but_java_rules" or "g-dog skinny butt" ( sorry if these are peoples actual names ) so feel free to go there and explore your needs to violate our 2 rules. At the end of the day, you'll realize that the timeliness and accuracy of the responses to any problem you encounter will be much better here and worth adhering to those 2 rules( I base this opinion on experience on other sites, not my allegiance to world domination here ).
If your having trouble thinking of a name here is a small list to help you on your way to having a proper name:
here is a name shortlist:
Zena Anderson
Yuko Bottan
Xerces Carrera
Walter Doyle
Vera Emerson
Uzzo Fowler
Tuomi Goldie
Shankar Harrison
Riu Isban
Quenton Johnson( or Johnston )
Pablo Kukkee
Owen Lowry
Newt Murphy
Maury Norinen
Lance Ozolinsh
Kuomi Porter
Jamie Quinn* excellent choice of first name
Iman Robertson** excellent choice of last name here
Hal Sutton
Guido Tattabee
Francois Ulonov
Erik Vasicek
Dale Wanten
Castor Xu
Butch Yokahama
Alexander Zappa
There you go. 26 firstnames, 26 lastnames. ( one for each letter in the alphabet ) [ /rant ]
now that I finished ranting, I think that the naming policy encourages a community atmosphere, and distinguishes it from every other site on the net.
Jamie
[ October 16, 2003: Message edited by: Jamie Robertson ]

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

As one of the newest bartenders, and actually, a pretty new member of the site in the first place, I've made no secret of the fact that the special community atmosphere of JavaRanch is what makes it worth my while. The people you interact with here are real people, not the "l33t h4x0rs" that seem to dominate most other online forums these days.
JavaRanch reminds me very much of Usenet in the old days, when its reach was limited to a few acadmic sites. If Joe Blow posted a message to Usenet back then, chances are you knew him, and even if you didn't, somebody else did. Everybody was Joe Blow from U.C. Berkeley, or Fred Smith at prep.ai.mit.edu . People were there to get their computers to work, and to work together, and everybody was in the same boat. Everybody wanted to help everyone else, and in no small part, that was because of the sense of community. You got something out of it, and you felt obligated to give back.
Without identities, people feel no such obligation. If you can ask a question anonymously, do you even need to say "thank you!" when you get the answer? Most people seem to think not.
Anyway, sorry, I sound like Dana Carvey's "grumpy old man" -- "in my day, you had to talk via UUCP over wet string at 300 baud and you LIKED IT!" -- but I think the 80% Jamie mentions agree with me on the essential points. The naming policy, and the "be nice" rule, rock. They're the magic ingredients that keep this place humming.

[Jamie Robertson]

And just for the record, I'm not ranting because someone wants to discuss the naming policy, just that this thread keeps popping up with no new discussion points except "I don't like the Naming Policy", then we have to keep re-iterating points made earlier in the discussion. If you read the entire thread, it seems like every time the thread is brought back from the dead, the discussion follows the same path as the original, which does nothing to add to the forum except use more disk space.

[VVVS LAXMAN]

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
Naren, thank you for sharing your opinion of the JavaRanch naming standard. Since we have no intention of changing it and you apparently can not accept it I have closed your account. You may want to visit the Sun site as their forums have no naming requirements.

How do you expect this "Naren" person to reply or change the name if the account is closed.?

[Gregg Bolinger]

Originally posted by VVVS LAXMAN:

How do you expect this "Naren" person to reply or change the name if the account is closed.?

I think this "Naren" person had ample opportunity to change his/her account name and chose to argue about the Naming Policy instead.

[Mani Ram]

Originally posted by VVVS LAXMAN:

How do you expect this "Naren" person to reply or change the name if the account is closed.?

I don't think TP is expecting any reply from him! And if "Naren" wants to reply, he can always create a new account (hopefully with a name which adhers to the naming convention).

[Gregg Bolinger]

And on Jamie's note, here is a random name generator that might help.

[Jason Menard]

Originally posted by Mani Ram:
I don't think TP is expecting any reply from him! And if "Naren" wants to reply, he can always create a new account (hopefully with a name which adhers to the naming convention).

As opposed to VVVS LAXMAN, for example.

[VVVS LAXMAN]

is anything wrong with VVVS LAXMAN?

[Mani Ram]

Originally posted by VVVS LAXMAN:
is anything wrong with VVVS LAXMAN?

I don't know. Probably this guy can tell.

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by VVVS LAXMAN:
is anything wrong with VVVS LAXMAN?

As the naming standard mentioned, obviously fictitous names will be closed. Please revise your name to meet the JavaRanch naming standard. Thank you.

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by VVVS LAXMAN:
How do you expect this "Naren" person to reply or change the name if the account is closed.?

I don't expect him to. Since he thinks the naming standard is stupid and he thinks the moderators are stupid I assumed that he has no interest in being a member of a stupid community.

[Michael Ernest]

We should probably not allows any cricket dweebs on our site too.
I say as long as someone thinks we're a bunch of arbitrary dictators we shouldn't disappoint them.
Oooh, big red welt forming on the back of my neck. Is that you, Marilyn?

[Joel McNary]

I'm actually quiet pleased about the naming policy. It helps me learn who the people are here and associate a personalitywith their posts. Some people I get along quite well with, some people I find annoying, and some people I find obnoxious. (But I'm not tellin' whose who )
More to the point, I would be hard pressed to make the same connections with people named "SurferDude36", 'sexy_kitten69" or "tsalconocieht." (OK, I might be able to remember that last one....") Monikers like those are very transient things. But when I see a post by Jim Yingst or Stan James or Maulin Vasavada or Ernest Friedman-Hill I know what to expect from their posts (in the latter case it should contain at least one statement that's usable in a .sig )
In addition, we have a faily large number of authors and other Java luminaries participating here at the Ranch. The use of their real names makes it very easy to recognize them and talk to them.
Turning my attention to the moose, I would say that it is not "unprofessional" to have the moose. In fact, to me it shows that someone has put a lot of thuoght into the design of this site. If your job involved researching fast food would be critized for exploring mcdonalds.com just because that website had a clown on it? Or do you think that monster.com is unprofessional because of that...thing? Of course not. The difference between those sites and JavaRanch is that those logos are more widely recognized. The solution to that is to proudly show the moose. Explain about JavaRanch. Buy something from the Tackroom and take/wear it to work. (Preferably on something visible, but the undies would be acceptable too... )Get people to leanr about what a great place JavaRanch is, and you won't have to hide the moose in shame.

[VVVS LAXMAN]

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:

I don't expect him to. Since he thinks the naming standard is stupid and he thinks the moderators are stupid I assumed that he has no interest in being a member of a stupid community.

I contributed more than what I gained from this forum. I can't enjoy the company of stupid people (who thinik being creative in coming up with fake names is OK but it's not OK to use "obvious" fake names - obvious mark of stupidity). I see the issues in black and white, there are no shades of gray for me. :roll:
I am outtta here. Your website, your rules, your world... too small for me.
some people still genuinely believe in dictators like Hitler Good luck to them.. they can continue to salute him.

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

And once again, we see the enduring validity of Godwin's Law.

[Gregg Bolinger]

Turning my attention to the moose, I would say that it is not "unprofessional" to have the moose. In fact, to me it shows that someone has put a lot of thuoght into the design of this site. If your job involved researching fast food would be critized for exploring mcdonalds.com just because that website had a clown on it? Or do you think that monster.com is unprofessional because of that...thing? Of course not. The difference between those sites and JavaRanch is that those logos are more widely recognized. The solution to that is to proudly show the moose. Explain about JavaRanch. Buy something from the Tackroom and take/wear it to work. (Preferably on something visible, but the undies would be acceptable too... )Get people to leanr about what a great place JavaRanch is, and you won't have to hide the moose in shame.
Very well said Joel. I have never really thought of it that way. Of course, I have never had a problem with the Moose, and neither has anyone I work with. We all just think it is funny. But you make a very good point. Several respectable companies have goofy trademarks and mascots. Why should we be any different?

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by VVVS LAXMAN:
I am outtta here. Your website, your rules, your world... too small for me.

I am sorry that you found our rules too dictatorial for your taste. I have closed your account for you so you needn't worry about that. As I suggested before, the forums at java.sun.com might be more to your liking as they have no naming requirements. Of course they also have flame wars and other things that we try to prevent from occurring here. We think our naming policy helps to create the great culture that we have at JavaRanch. You are always welcome to return if you change your mind and agree to live by our two rules (1) be nice and (2) use your real name (or at least one that seems real).

[Jim Yingst]

While a lot of us do like the current art scheme, I am sympathetic to those who are a little uncomfortable having a big funny moose on their screens at work. I doubt we'd want to remove the moose entirely - too many of us like it. However an ideal solution might be a system in which each user could choose a view they like, affacting how they see all the forums. A user's account could be configured to "fun" or "serious" or whatever oather names we might choose, and then they'd either see normal moose graphics, or boring grey and white everywhere. Offhand I don't know how feasible this might be sometime in the future; I'm just tossing the idea out there.
Right now though, users of most modern browsers do have the option of blocking images while they browse. This may be preferable for some people. I quickly tested how this looks on the browsers I have installed:
Mozilla 1.5: Can block images on a per-site basis, so once you tell it to block images from javaranch.com, you can still visit other sites normally without having to reconfigure. However Mozilla doesn't seem to want to display ALT text, which makes it a bit hard to navigate. You don't get the little icons for edit, profile, reply, private message, etc. And you don't get the blue posting buttons. So it's not so great for browsing, unless you cna figure out how to enable alt text.
Opera 7.20: Can block images, but not on per-site basis. So if you're visiting other sites where you want images, you have to keep reconfiguring. Otherwise though, works fine - alt text is displayed properly.
MS Internet Explorer 6.0: Worst of both worlds, as expected. Doesn't display alt text or block on per-site basis.
If anyone has better luck with a browser, please let me know...

[Ilja Preuss]

Originally posted by Jim Yingst:
A user's account could be configured to "fun" or "serious" or whatever oather names we might choose, and then they'd either see normal moose graphics, or boring grey and white everywhere.

I'd call it "fun" and "boring"...

[Amit Agrawal]

Originally posted by Jim Yingst:
However an ideal solution might be a system in which each user could choose a view they like, affacting how they see all the forums. A user's account could be configured to "fun" or "serious" or whatever oather names we might choose, and then they'd either see normal moose graphics, or boring grey and white everywhere. .....
Right now though, users of most modern browsers do have the option of blocking images while they browse. ...

I would thank Jim the day it is implemented. Although I am a coder by heart, I have to interact with many non-techie ppl for supporting them in their business development efforts. Now most of them are MBAs-Marketing who have never been to this site and it is not feasible to explain each of them all about the Moose logo (neither i feel like doing so), which is open in one of the browser most of the time.
So if i have an option of turning the comical images off, I would do so but obviously i can't turn off all the images of all the web pages just to avoid one moose!! All i can do is to wait for the day when Jim's idea of personalizing the site is implemented!!

[Ross Branje]

Hi, I was going to write my support of a professional naming convention & then leave this thread. However, it seems that a two year old nice-to-have has been left by the wayside... someone once talked about getting a button installed/configured so that users do not have to see a one-eyed moose on their web page.
Oh yes, great site! WTG on the naming convention.
Ross

[Cindy Glass]

Yes, well that would be intertwined with the on-going discussions of migrating to a different tool.
No one seems too eager to put effort into this tool if we are just leaving it behind eventually. Of course there is still no ETA on when that will happen, although there are folks that are working on it when they can.

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

We sure are!

[Merlin of Chaos]

Hi all,

first of all sorry for my obviously NOT real-name-like alias. I registered yesterday, posted a new thread, got a remark for the chosen nick and want to share my opinion on the naming policy.

I am completely against this kind of enforcement.

Jamie Robertson, thanks for the qute examples (third page, posted October 16, 2003 12:25 PM)... but how could "John Smith" register with his real name? There should been hunderts of developers with this name...
This reminds me of one post I red here - from Ashok Mash who tried to register with nicks very close to the real name and got some warnings abut the chosen name: first page, posted on June 10, 2002 08:34 AM

And in general, how could be defined such a rule? If I register with my real name I will receive a warning as soon as with "Merlin of Chaos", this is for sure. We have some colleges in office in India and I can assure you that the names are so hard to pronounciate (for us at least, no hard feelings) that we work together almost only with nick names. Nobody is hurt or insulted and the result is very friendly working atmosphere.

I totaly agree with Pradeep Bhat (first page, posted May 28, 2002 02:46 AM) that the right time to enforce the naming policy is during registration and not after it. This only irritate people without giving anything positive to the community.

And last, but not least, I think that a developers forum have to focus on sharing peoples knowledge and not on naming conventions. If the name, or nick, of the person who provides a helping answer is "Bill Gates", "George Bush" or "Java_Guru-1" - it is the same positive result - the person in trouble got help and the community earned new experience.

Thanks.

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

'Bye, Merlin of Chaos. Sorry it didn't work out.

This thread is for discussing the naming policy, not challenging it or defying it. If you want to talk about changing it, that's great. But you have to follow the rules. If you want to stage an act of civil disobedience, well, sorry, I'll just lock your account.
[ June 27, 2004: Message edited by: Ernest Friedman-Hill ]

[paul wheaton]

That's an interesting idea Merlin. I encourage you to set up a site and try it out.

I have a different idea and I'm doing it here. While there's some folks that agree with you, I've heard from more folks that like this way better. The longer I've done it this way, the more I like it.

[Thomas Paul]

I'm not sure how you could enforce the naming policy only at registration. I suppose we could build a database of every single famous person who ever lived and validate names against the database. It seems to me that if a person reads the naming requirement, agrees to it, and then creates a phony name that doesn't follow the standard that there isn't much we can do about that except correct them after they post. I guess another option would be to block people from posting until their chosen name has been validated by a person but I think that would make the site harder to use.

[Anonymous]

Paul Wheaton, I understand your idea and appreciate it, really. I met a strange (for me at least) idea and wanted only to share my opinion on it, it is a discussion after all, isn't is? I wish you all the best

Although there is no need to start my own site, take a look if you have a moment at http://www.experts-exchange.com/ or http://forum.java.sun.com/

Thomas Paul, validation from human is unfortunately the only option with such a policy... some of the members do have problems using the site already.

And please, let Ernest Friedman-Hill remove the account, he will be glad to

[Mapraputa Is]

There are a lot of communities that don't have this rule, and certainly they have their own advantages, as well as disadvantages. We preferred one set of advantages over another. Now "real names" policy became a distinctive feature of this community, or call it "culture". Now it's much like "If a grandma had mustache, she would be a grandpa"...

Hope to change your display name isn't too heavy a burden, and you will stay with us.
[ June 27, 2004: Message edited by: Mapraputa Is ]

[Muhammad Umair]

i usually use my nick name as my name, that is "hiUmair"
cant i use it here ???

will i not be eligible for free books or any other competitions ?

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

Originally posted by Muhammad Umair:
i usually use my nick name as my name, that is "hiUmair"
cant i use it here ???

will i not be eligible for free books or any other competitions ?

Hi,

Welcome to JavaRanch!

If your display name were "hiUmair", we'd ask you nicely to change it each time you posted. In the meantime, yes, you wouldn't be eligible to win any books. After three warnings without a response, we'd generally close your account. That's how it works around here.

In any case, thanks for following the rule!

[Stephen Boston]

Very intresting discussion.

I find having to use my real name refreshing. I selected Java Ranch as one of my main Java forums just because of these rules. Real names and be nice.
I hate visiting a few other forums and wading through nasty posts.

So, thanks for the great place to hang out!

[Bear Bibeault]

Stephen, that's a really good summation of why the policies are in place. It strives to keep the Ranch a professional and friendly place. The moose keeps it from getting too stuffy!

It could be rather difficult to maintain that level of professionalism when answering posted questions from 'sexkitten' or 'javag33khax0r'.

It's all psychological, but seems to work out.

And I know what you mean about other places on the net. I long ago stopped hanging out places where the signal to noise ratio sucks.
[ July 22, 2005: Message edited by: Bear Bibeault ]

[Jim Yingst]

OK, great, but it seems a little suspicious to me that the last two posts were from people with names like "Boston" and "Bear". Real people don't name themselves after animals and seventies rock bands, do they?

[Bear Bibeault]

Could be worse: Armadillo Abba, for example.

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

"Yingst" is actually Elvish for "Armadillo".

[Stephen Boston]

Well, I'm really named after a tea party.

Better than a strangler I quess.
:roll:

[Marc Peabody]

Originally posted by J.D. Walker:
Besides, my parents had a sense of humor, and I'd like to kick my Dad's ass. The J. in J.D. actually does stand for Jay. Still don't get it? Put the first name and last name together, and think about it.....you'll get it

I met a state trooper in Illinois with a badge that read "J WALKER" and it was hard not to laugh at the irony.

I also went to school with a kid whose full name was Jay Dee.

You're not alone.

[Shivani Chandna]

This site interms of info is one of the best.

But the forum can be improved.I am comparing with Sun's java forums.

First of all the code formatting. Its as good as non existant.(The worse of pains of using this forum)

Another Absurd thing: The javascript pop up that comes for addding bold.Instead atleast the "[b]" should come as "[code]" does.

Even the similies are unnecessarily provided.

Where are the buttons Post a Reply or Search situated - should be next to every message posted ( Oh ok the "" icon stands for reply ). But why not keep icons having text instead? and reposition those top two buttons...

I was amazed to see that there are "people" moderating this forum regularly....Sending messages like write "you" instead of "u" or keep a real name .. how many productive hours of such intelligent people are going waste with this strategy

Ah thats enough for now.

But I really do like the moose on the top and the cow and ranch concept that java ranch uses. its very creative....

Regards.