Thursday, June 26, 2014

Another Annoyance

What is it with web site registrations that insist you supply a "Title"?

I'm Stephen Posey, I don't generally go by "Mister" Stephen Posey and I don't care to be addressed that way, yet when registering for some sites, I'm forced to pick a title or I can't complete the registration.

Thinking about this, I speculate some sites may use this as a proxy for asking for people's gender, which I suppose is not PC (if not, in fact, of questionable legality).

The problem is not all the titles offered on most sites are gender specific ("Dr." in particular), so the result is imperfect.

For most sites, I'd suggest asking themselves why they think they need to know a person's gender, and why they think they can't ask for it directly.

If there is insufficient reason (and better targeting advertising is not a good enough reason, IMNSHO, YMMV), then don't ask and don't try to do an end run by demanding some proxy factoid.

Sites with legitimate "need to know" (e.g. health, financial, certain kinds of surveys) are logically exempt from this.

Otherwise they should be up front about what it is they want to know (and why); and allow that the registrant may not want to provide the information.

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