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He [Vic] says that he is trying to make sure a positive tone gets set here. Like when a restaurant doesn't allow people who aren't wearing shirts to enter. He says it isn't about real names. He says he isn't using his legal name here. He says, instead, it is about having common names and removing people who spell their names in weird ways, like using upside-down characters, or who are using obviously fake names, like "god" or worse.

There are a few problems with this as implemented in Google+. (Correct me if I'm misinformed, I haven't been able to keep on top of all the new news.)

EDIT: I made some wrong assumptions, particularly about how your Google accounts are tied together, see Matt's reply below.

1) The rules are apparently not being made clear. If I see "no shirt, no shoes, no service" on the entrance I know exactly what that means. When you sign up for Google+ I'm pretty sure it doesn't say "Upside down characters and offensive names will lead to all your Google accounts getting irreversibly banned." Maybe there's some language buried in the TOS. That's not good enough.

2) Google is changing the rules (or enforcement of the rules) late in the game. If someone has had a Gmail account for 5 years using a pseudonym and Google just now decides to lock them out of it when they try to sign up for Google+, that is Google's fault. At least warn them of the offense before banning or prevent them from using Google+ while still allowing access to their Gmail.

3) No recourse. I know Gmail is a free service, but people still use it for registering on financial websites and priceless family correspondence. It is tied to someone's identity. Google needs to have a well defined and timely path of recourse for people who get banned for minor offenses. Directing all customer support requests to /dev/null is not acceptable.

We have documentation about the names policy for Google Profiles: http://www.google.com/support/profiles/bin/answer.py?answer=...

Your #2 and #3 points seem to assume that if your profile name violates the policy, your Gmail access is suspended, but that's not true. If your profile is suspended for not having a real/common name, that only affects services that use your profile (Google+/Buzz/+1). It doesn't affect other services like Gmail, Blogger, Docs, or Calendar that don't use your profile. So you can continue to use Gmail even if you can't use Google+.

Finally, even though Gmail will work even if you can't use Google+, there is recourse to appeal a name suspension. Here's the url to use for an appeal: http://www.google.com/support/profiles/bin/request.py?hl=en&...

What happened in that case where the kid updated his Google Profile to show his age (under 13), and he ended up losing access to his Gmail account?

There's obviously some interaction between Google Profile/Google+ and Gmail.

That was a bit different.

In the US, you basically can't provide online services like Gmail to anyone < 13 years old. When the kid created his Gmail account he must have lied about his birthday (or they wouldn't have let him signup). Then when he did his Google+ profile, he gave his real age. Google, now knowing his real age, didn't have much choice.

That said, the haziness around what will get your Google account banned is keeping me off Google+. Even if the terms are nuanced, I don't have any faith that my account would be restored if it were suspended in error.

When the kid created his Gmail account he must have lied about his birthday (or they wouldn't have let him signup).

No. When the kid was identified as being from the Netherlands, they didn't bother asking his age because he doesn't live in a country where it is a legal issue.

Then they asked him for Google+, and once they discovered his age they banned him due to the US law.

"it is about... removing people who spell their names in weird ways, like using upside-down characters"

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. The ones who dare to spell their names with upside down characters.

Don't forget the furriners.

The ones whose parents didn't give them enough attention so they have to spend their days testing the boundaries of internet communities and then throwing a fit because their wingding character isn't supported.

That's a pretty flippant attitude, considering people are losing access to critical stuff like all their emails for making the mistake of violating some rule buried in a 20 page TOS.

People don't lose access to Gmail just because of the common/real name policy. I posted this earlier in the thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2803334

Hi Matt -- I got complaints from people on Twitter saying they couldn't click through to a page I linked to on Google-Plus. I probably should have said that specifically in the post (though I did say it in a comment).

Gotcha--if you want to point me to a couple of those tweets, I can pass that on to Google+ folks to check into. If someone shares a post publicly (as opposed to sharing with a limited circle of people), we definitely want people to be able to read those public posts.

I went to look but it was a couple of days ago, and that's hundreds of messages down the list in my Mentions tab on Twitter. And with 140 chars, I'm basically scanning for grunts and snorts. But I can do you better. Here's a list of all my links for the last few months. Some of those go to GP articles. Those are the ones people are complaining about.

http://static.scripting.com/myReallySimple/linkblog.html

Looks like all you have to do is search for plus.google.com in that list. :-)

I'm fine with Google allowing "fake" names that look like real names, but not allowing names like "haxxor" or whatever.

It's a rabbit hole. You'd think that banning the name anti is a good heuristic given handles like anti Christ. But anti is a perfectly valid name in parts of eastern Europe.

Re can anyone can read the posts - Yes!

Your g+ public profile page doubles as your blog of 'Public' posts.

For me their philosophy is clear. Each G+ user needs to be identifiable. They are not against pseudonyms per se but if your pseudonym means they can't identify you then "off with your head" - Otherwise how can they sell advertising?

This is the real cost we pay for google's "free" services. (BTW I don't as long as I can use a pseudonym of some sort).

I can read the post fine while logged in to my Google Apps (Google+ ineligible) account.

Thanks for confirming, polymer. It was strange to read that section of Winer's article. Just so people know: if you're viewing a post, I believe you can click on the timestamp to the right of the person's name, e.g. "Yesterday 9:45 PM (edited 3:02 AM)" to get a permalink to the post.

Or if you see the post in your stream, I think you can also click the dropdown arrow at the top-right of the post and select "Link to this post."

Interesting that the community has to go through Scoble to get any answers.

> (everyone is working hard on a raft of different things and can't just react overnight to community needs)

This attitude is interesting to me. Why not? It can't be because of scale, can it? New users are being throttled.

Isn't responding quickly, perhaps overnight or even within a few days, exactly what you need to make this nascent product work well?

Such sluggishness is interesting, and instructive of the perils in getting big, even when being a startup is somewhere in the DNA. But I wonder what opportunities it creates, and for whom. Like an airline fare war, I wonder if Facebook might decide that rapid evolution was worth the short term cost to make Google hurt. Of course, Facebook is bulky itself these days, too.

I don't think that Google is especially slow in this area (e.g. they've been very responsive when mega-posts by very popular people were causing a bunch of noise). Instead, I think it's because Google is trying to do a bunch of different things that need engineering cycles. When Google+ launched, people wanted first-class integration with Google Apps. People has also been clamoring for business/entity pages, not just personal pages. Those are both important and will take some time. There's just a lot to do, even for a service that's only a few weeks old.