First name and professional name are readonly

[T-Brick]

The first name and professional name fields cannot be updated, meaning that students (and potentially instructors) who have had their name changed or who do not use a particular name will be forced to see said old name.

[dialmond]

I also have a problem with this, haha, can we bump this issue? Umut Acar reacted with a thumbs up but it's been a year...

[T-Brick]

bump

[umutacar]

you can edit your "preferred name" now under your profile

[dialmond]

Hi Umut,

I have some issues with this solution, still. First of all, the preferred name isn't used in the drop-down menu when a student clicks on their profile (update: or in the email to confirm a secondary email).

But more importantly, why does Diderot need to have static first name / professional name fields in the first place? If I created an account today I could choose what name to enter in these fields. It's not necessarily my legal name, it's not pulled from CMU's records, the name on my account is the name that I chose to enter at registration. If I can choose the name associated with my account at registration, why can't I choose to change it now?

A preferred name field makes more sense for something like CMU's SIO, where legal names are needed for legal purposes, and preferred names are (ideally) used for everything else. But it really doesn't look like Diderot needs to keep track of a student's legal name or name history.

The student rosters that CMU gives to my professors has my preferred name on it. If the first name field is shown to my instructors then there's going to be an in-congruence there.

As a creator of software for a university you're going to have a lot of users, users who have to use your software for their courses. You're going to have future users, current users like me, who will need to change their names. This shouldn't need to be done manually every time, requiring a user to go through the process of contacting you and waiting for you to change it. Users should have the same autonomy over their names that Diderot gives at registration at all times.

I hope you can clarify why Diderot needs to keep track of the name entered at registration. Please consider re-opening this issue, too, especially when the preferred name isn't even used everywhere.

And while I'm making this issue, could you please change the name that appears in the first name field to my preferred name? (update: for finding my account, my secondary email is cdiamond [at] cmu [dot] edu and the last name is Diamond)

Thanks, Cassidy

[umutacar]

Hi Cassidy, thank you for your thoughts.
The name not showing under the avatar is an oversight on our side. It will be fixed soon.

We do need to be consistent with SIO. We can also allow course staff edit the first and last names so the names can be changed with their knowledge.

[T-Brick]

There is no reason that a student should have to tell a course staff to update their name. It should just be editable.

Every other course resource that I can think of (piazza, canvas, gradescope, autolab, etc.) allows names to be edited by the user. You either need to state the reason this is technically infeasible for Diderot or allow people to change it.

[T-Brick]

And to be honest, I find it frankly disgusting that you leave this issue open for a year, and after a number of requests to fix it (from various people) you do nothing, and only after I reach out to SCS DEI then do you make this half-assed "Preferred First Name" field which doesn't acknowledge the issue in any capacity.

There should be no "Preferred First Name" option. Users must be able to edit their name. You can either fix this now, or we can continue to play this game where I file complaints to SCS DEI, Title IX, etc. and you pretend you don't know what you are doing.

[umutacar]

ohh my, this is getting interesting. Thea, this is not a university funded or supported project. i am developing and offering diderot to users using external research funds. (i even use my own personal money for some expenses) . there are limits to my time and our funding and what i can do. i think your heart is at the right place and your anger is right but it is directed towards the wrong person.

[umutacar]

Also, to be clear, i have not fixed this because of complaints from DEI or Title X. I go through our list of issues based the availability of funding and time.

[dialmond]

Hi Cassidy, thank you for your thoughts. The name not showing under the avatar is an oversight on our side. It will be fixed soon.

We do need to be consistent with SIO. We can also allow course staff edit the first and last names so the names can be changed with their knowledge.

Hi Umut,

I'm still not sure this is a consistent solution. I have multiple instructors on Diderot. If it just takes one to change my name, won't the other instructors not be aware of the change?

But again, more importantly, as mentioned none of CMU's other platforms require students to request a name change. I feel like I shouldn't have to rely on the benevolence of my professors to not get deadnamed by your software. I shouldn't have to expose my deadname, my old name, to my professors in order to change it. When I changed my preferred name with CMU's SIO, none of my professors were notified. To my knowledge none of my current professors could have a chance to know my deadname except through Diderot.

If I'm required to use your software for my courses at CMU, I feel like it should respect CMU's student privacy rights and CMU's preferred name policy. CMU gives me the privacy rights to avoid showing my professors my old name via directory information, and the ability to easily update my name in all places where it does not need to be used for legal business. Shouldn't Diderot be consistent with this?

I understand that this isn't a university funded or supported project, but clearly Diderot is integral to many classes' operations. It was developed by CMU professors for use at CMU. I think it should therefore reflect official CMU policies.

I think notifying professors of a name change is a reasonable concern to have but in my case, from my professors' perspectives I'm not changing my name, this is the name I've always used with them.

Finally, if I'm correct hasn't Diderot received school funding in the past? From this Tartan article:

We have support, especially financial support, from the Dean’s office, and that is one of the reasons we are able to expand within CMU right now. That support allows us to grow here," Ada said.

Fundamentally, the source of Diderot's funding isn't important. What is important, however, is the inconsistencies between Diderot and CMU's official policies, especially given the widespread use of the program within university courses.

Thanks, Cassidy

[T-Brick]

Thea, this is not a university funded or supported project. i am developing and offering diderot to users using external research funds. (i even use my own personal money for some expenses) . there are limits to my time and our funding and what i can do. i think your heart is at the right place and your anger is right but it is directed towards the wrong person.

If I had to guess, I would estimate that close to a thousand CMU students use Diderot every year. I understand that there are limits to your time and money, etc. The reality is is that as it stands, because of being unable to edit things, Diderot negatively impacts some students. In my opinion, if Diderot doesn't have the resources to fix these kinds of issues in a timely manner, then it should not be used in any educational capacity, and most certainly not at the scale it is being used at CMU.

I've tried to be patient about it, I made this issue a year ago, Cassidy commented about a year later, I know a 210 TA reached out a month ago. I replied to get more attention to this 9 days ago. This seems to me like a very simple fix, just make the "First name" field a read/write field. Yet it's taken 13 months to get to where we are now and the issue still remains.

i think your heart is at the right place and your anger is right but it is directed towards the wrong person.

I have been consistent in my position that the name fields should be editable, and it's extremely frustrating that it feels like you are trying to do anything but allow that and at the same time have not given any concrete reason why you cannot just do that.

Also, to be clear, i have not fixed this because of complaints from DEI or Title X. I go through our list of issues based the availability of funding and time.

I'm glad to hear that this is not the case.

[umutacar]

Hi Cassidy, you make good points and I am happy to consider them and make the relevant updates. But, I request from the students to please be kind. I am only trying to improve the education for you all and doing so in difficult circumstances.

Re: funding. Yes Diderot did use to receive funding from SCS Dean's Office. But the Dean's Office abruptly cut the funding early Spring 2021 and I have transitioned to more limited external funding (I had to put in serious work complete that semester without a major meltdown with the funding that I had). Since then I have been developing, maintaning, and offering Diderot using external funds. It is a moderately large system, it takes a lot of work to maintain and even small features such as these take much time and effort...

[T-Brick]

If I shouldn't be mad at you then who should I be mad at?

[dialmond]

Hi Cassidy, you make good points and I am happy to consider them and make the relevant updates.

Thank you for considering this! Moving forward with this issue, what do you plan on changing next?

I appreciate you taking the time to address this problem with a preferred name field, but I hope you'll agree with me now that even if fully implemented it won't be the best solution. I think if we communicate now on what the best solution should look like, it'll save all of us time as opposed to going back and forth again based on your implementation.

If there's a further reason why you believe students shouldn't be able to write the first name/professional name fields, I would appreciate you sharing it. I still believe that this is both the best and simplest resolution of this issue.

But, I request from the students to please be kind. I am only trying to improve the education for you all and doing so in difficult circumstances.

I apologize if my responses came off as unkind. I recognize that maintaining Diderot is a lot of work, and I'm sorry that the Dean's office cut funding, that seems like a mistake on their part to me. This software's had a lot of success in SCS and beyond. I'm grateful you're making these changes, but again, I want to motivate solutions that best resolve this issue.

In your response, I'd appreciate hearing your opinion on these subjects specifically:

• What do you plan on changing next?
• If there's a further reason why you believe students shouldn't be able to write the first name/professional name fields, I would appreciate you sharing it

Thanks, Cassidy

[umutacar]

Hi Thea @T-Brick Let me start by saying that I understand your anger, and in fact, I share it. Suffices to say that I made the case that Diderot ought to be funded adequately given the many students and courses using it (any many others that want to use but I am unable to support). But the folks controlling the funding do not seem to agree, worse they do not even respond... But that is just me trying. We should remember that there are limits to what I can do---I am just a professor with a strange name!

I think you will have better luck. So... Instead of telling you who you can get angry at, I want to recommend a more constructive step and recommend writing to President Farnam Jahanian. The buck would have to stop with him. https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~farnam/

Here is some data regarding Diderot usage since Spring 2019

-- Number of course registrations 13,557 -- Number of unique users: 7732 (on average a student takes ~2 courses on Diderot) -- Number of courses: over 100 -- Number of API requests served on a typical semester day: over 1 Million

[umutacar]

Hi Cassidy @dialmond I added the Preferred Name option because it is compatible with SIO and similar systems.

It might be possible to support editing names but I need to think through it carefully, because there are a relatively large number of features on Diderot (some you might not be aware of because the course you are taking is not using them, and because you are student, and you see a limited interface). In this context, I went with the Preferred name solution because I realized it is important and I wanted to get it done asap.

For example, things that come to mind... 1) Most faculty upload SIO rosters on Diderot instead of allowing students self register. In this case, it might be confusing to allow students to change names themselves 2) I need to check if this would this work with SIO (we do send data back to SIO so need to check that different names does not trip it up) 3) I need to check with the instructors and take into account their feedback. Instructors can download various pieces of information from Diderot and use it to do various analysis, also based on SIO data.

[T-Brick]

I'll make sure to write to Farnam about Diderot's funding, since the university not paying for its frankly unacceptable.

Most faculty upload SIO rosters on Diderot instead of allowing students self register. In this case, it might be confusing to allow students to change names themselves

1. SIO should not be giving legal/incorrect names to professors in the first place. This means if I take a course my name would not match the one on the roster.
2. Mutliple students can have the same name, using exclusively names as identifiers is not sound and I'm certain that SIO and other university resources account for this.
3. Canvas, piazza, gradescope (services similar to Diderot) don't send incorrect names to professors. In fact professors seemed very well positioned to deal with this already, since many international students use an "American" name on these resource which often differs from the name on SIO (or vice-versa)

And even if SIO does give incorrect names to instructors, that does not justify Diderot harming it own users (students) by doing the same.

[umutacar]

An update on this issue Cassidy @dialmond did amazing work and figured out the CMU SIO policies. We then met in person and talked. Based on this conversation, I have made some updates to Diderot's handling of names and made the first and last name editable. I hope that the updates have resolved this issue to satisfaction.

For all of those that are negatively impacted by this, I am deeply sorry that it has taken this so long to fix.