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fubarobfusco comments on The horrifying importance of domain knowledge - Less Wrong Discussion
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Sometimes a user puts something in a "name" field that they do not actually intend to be used to identify themselves.
They may be trying to get that string displayed to other users in a highlighted fashion. If someone puts "Wal-Mart Sucks" in the name field on a blog comment, it isn't because they seriously want to be identified by the surname of Sucks. They're just saying that Wal-Mart sucks, in a dramatic way.
They may be trying to break the system in one way or another. If someone puts their name as "Robert'; drop table students; --" then depending on the social and technical context they might be giving themselves a clever alias; or they might be trying to attack the database.
All fair enough.
There's also the possibility of accidentally entering wrong characters-- I assume this is unlikely since people should know how to type their names, but people have to type their names so much that even a low chance of fumble-fingers is going to occur now and then.
Or their mom might be a hacker.
Incidentally, there are many cases where I don't care about my username at all and have to come up with something. I'd find it acceptable if they'd just give me a number and a password, or let me register just with a password (perhaps provided by them?), maybe plus e-mail.