[Wikipedia-l] Re: Celebrity users

Wed Jan 12 04:11:40 UTC 2005

On Tue, 11 Jan 2005, Josh Gerdes wrote:

> I think this is a pretty unlikely scenario. However, if a person *were* to

Actually it isn't.  It is quite common for people to have the same name 
regardless of how famous they are.  This is the main reason police 
habitually refer to people using their full name (including middle name) 
if they have one.

Type your own name into www.switchboard.com and be disappointed about how 
many people have your name in the US alone :)

I used to work with Jim Carey.  The real Jim Carey?  Well the one I knew 
was real, although he wasn't famous.  I've heard of many other examples of 
a person having the same name as someone who is famous.

> on his or her user page that he or she is not the famous person, though.

If it were me I'd be inclined to let people figure it out for themselves 
:)  In fact if it were me and someone insisted that I put a marker on my 
home page indicating I was not the other "famous" Robert Brockway I'd 
likely be insulted and that'd be the last you'd see of me.

Besides, who is famous is culturally dependent.  As an Australian I am
certain I could name people who I consider to be famous but who 
non-Australians would not.  What if we encounter Bruce Paige or Ray
Martin?  I may wonder if they are the famous person but you may not 
(unless you are also Australian).  In the case of Bruce Paige you'd 
probably need to be from my home state to recognise the name.  I just 
looked up Ray Martin in Wikipedia.  He's a Canadian politician?  But I 
thought he was an Australian TV presenter.  Another couple of people with 
the same name.

Cheers,

Rob

-- 
Robert Brockway B.Sc.
Senior Technical Consultant, OpenTrend Solutions Ltd.
Phone: 416-669-3073 Email: rbrockway at opentrend.net http://www.opentrend.net
OpenTrend Solutions: Reliable, secure solutions to real world problems.
Contributing Member of Software in the Public Interest (www.spi-inc.org)