Russell Keith-MageePet peeve: Social media/communications platforms that assume that “first initial of both names” is an appropriate way to construct default avatar. If I’m going to abbreviate, I’m RM or RKM; I don’t recognise myself as RK.
Annalee@freakboy3742 I get "AH" all the time, because without a hyphen, databases like to pretend my first surname doesn't exist. Lies programmers believe about names...
Obi-Sean Kenobi@Annalee @freakboy3742 What’s the fix? Are there good ways to auto-detect double-barreled surnames? What if (as in your case, Annalee) they aren’t hyphenated?
@obisean @freakboy3742 The fix is to not assume things about users' names. Ask only for the name you need, and do not try to auto-detect anything about it. In most cases, "what should we call you?" will do the trick. If you need legal name, offer separate fields for personal and formal, and don't put ANY validation on either field. Assume they can be blank, the same, or contain literally any character.
@obisean @freakboy3742 Cause like the number of times I've had a name field tell me it can't handle "special" characters like spaces or hyphens...whew. You give me a field like that, I'mma mess up your data with a smile on my face. Your service is gonna be calling me "Ms. NameWERESORRYWEDONTRESPECTYOURName" or "Ms. "NameSPACEName" or "Ms. HyphensInSurnamesDateToAntiquityAndWeHaveNoArabUsersApparently."
@Annalee @freakboy3742 The point about Arab users was the one I had in my head in particular.
This hasn’t been an issue in anything I’ve worked on in the past, so thank you both for bringing it up and making me aware of it as a problem. I’ll look for opportunities in future projects to be more mindful of users’ names and name preferences.