Am I only one?

[Coby Foden]

Just for fun I hung out a short time in some newbie places and collected some names they had.

This is the future in SL avatar names.  And the names will get worse and worse as time goes on.
It is unbelievable that the Lab chose to do nothing about this chaos! :smileyfrustrated:

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Ossian wrote:

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

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Charolotte Caxton wrote:

So yes, the explanations that it would be too difficult or impossible to do are obviously not correct as it is plainly being done. 

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The explanations that it would be too difficult or impossible to do may have been misremembered/misunderstood. Here's a quote from Rodvik's response...

"But back to the matter at hand. As I promised if we couldn’t figure out a way that was a win/win for folks who want complete freedom vs. a list of last names, we wouldn’t do it. We couldn’t, so we wont."

Rodvik said a win/win solution couldn't be found. I did not read this as a technical statement so much as a business decision. Yes, both single and last name systems are still in operation. That is different than Linden Labs stating, as I quoted

here

, that the last name system created a lot of sign-up friction. While it is often technically possible to do unwise things, that doesn't mean you should.

I find the widespread supposition that forumites are representative of the larger SL population to be a bit a bit presumptive. We might be, but LL suggests otherwise, both directly (that previous quote) and indirectly (by their actions).

All that said, I'm not recommending we stop questioning LL's wisdom (I do it constantly), just that we remember they see more than we do.

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You're right about what Rodvik said, but in the past, before display names and single-name signup, LL was often asked if they could create a means by which users could change their names.  And to be clear, no one meant "change on the fly". The context was always "I have a stupid name and a huge inventory, so I'd like to change my name (permanently)." As part of those requests, users also expressed their willness to *pay* for the change.

LL's response was that it was for technical reasons not possible or too difficult.

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And I believe they were being honest when saying so. As I recall, they admitted that the association between username and UUID was not made in just one place, as you'd expect in a well planned system. Instead, SL is a mishmash of databases, some using UUID, some using username. The single name system was intended to be a patch over that nonsense that would allow "display names" to be coupled to a one time generated username. The new name display mechanisms would be a single database allowing users to change their display name while their identity was still presented to the legacy databases as a mix of username and UUID.

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

It would be interesting to randomly ask users with the "Resident" last name if they would prefer to have a proper last name, selected from a long list. My guess is that the majority would reflect the views expressed by the majority forum view, i.e. proper last names.

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Rodvik Linden wrote:

"So when it comes to last names, I have spent a lot of time going through all your comments and chatting with the team here. I learnt a lot. Firstly, as I already knew identity is very important, and the last name issue is extremely polarizing. 

What I didn’t know was how big a negative impact it used to have on new users signing up (the data is startling at how much friction it added). Folks just wanted to create their own name; they became even more annoyed if there was a pre-done last name that could fit but that had already been taken.

 The namespace hijacking issue was not solved by pre done last names."

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Phil, I believe Linden Lab asked exactly your question of every person who joined Second Life, by virtue of collecting statistics from the sign-up process. Either their methodology was wrong, or your guess is. Given my visibility into these issues, I'd not place a lot of trust in my own guesses.

[Theresa Tennyson]

I've been meaning to post something like this for a while and this is a good place as any.

HOW SECOND LIFE NAMES ACTUALLY WORK:

All SL accounts have names in the same format. They are in two halves -

The "First Name" is a text field that can have around 30 letters, upper and lower case, with no spaces.

The "Last Name" is a NUMBER. This number is looked up in a database when your last name is displayed as a word. Basically, it's closer to a ZIP code than a name. 1 corresponds to Linden, 42 to Powers, 4823 to Mayo, etc. My last name is one of the last official ones and the number is 10910. All "single name" accounts have 10327 in this field, which is normally suppressed but returns "Resident" when a script specifically requests "LAST NAME".

Because of this it's a major process to have a custom last name as it needs to be added to the central database - it would be the equivalent itof incorporating a new town and having the Post Office give you a new ZIP code.

Meanwhile, I have seven alt accounts with single names. None of them has a number in their username and if you'll look at their display names you'li see their completely legible, properly capitalized first and last names which I chose for them myself. I doubt I'd have made those accounts if I had to pick last names from a list.

 I think you'll find the "Johnny563273"'s of today are the "john1978 Lastnames" of yesteryear, and they probably won't stick around that long. 

[ROB34466IIIa]

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

I think you'll find the "Johnny563273"'s of today are the "john1978 Lastnames" of yesteryear, and they probably won't stick around that long. 

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Hey ... :robotmad:

[Charolotte Caxton]

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Coby Foden wrote:

Just for fun I hung out a short time in some newbie places and collected some names they had.

 

This is the future in SL avatar names.  And the names will get worse and worse as time goes on.

It is unbelievable that the Lab chose to do nothing about this chaos! :smileyfrustrated:

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Well ther you have it, Second Life is just a game. That is the difference between proffesional email accounts and kids accounts.

Throughout the web Second Life is advertised as a place to play, meet people, and find love.

Those of us who have made a home of it are troubled by all these new kids on the block with thier silly names and thier loud music.

It's ok, I came to play a game, and my music was criminal. I still managed to make a home of it. Had my user name been fairyprincess99, my display would of course have been Charolotte.

[Dillon Levenque]

Your music isn't exactly criminal, just questionable. Will you have a display name now of fairyprincess99? That would just look sooo cool :-).

[Charolotte Caxton]

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Dillon Levenque wrote:

Your music isn't exactly criminal, just questionable. Will you have a display name now of fairyprincess99? That would just look sooo cool :-).

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Lol, noooo, I won't use a display name, for the simple fact that doing so would put a dot in my real name.

[161488303349]

thanks for the info. it explains a lot

 

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

The "Last Name" is a NUMBER.

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omg !!! how evil is that !!! we all doomed

+

still cant see what is the problem to make lastnames again tho

when enter a lastname then is just a string of chars which is a unique number anyways. like convert to case then A = 65, B = 66, = a*256+66 = 16706. can then just use that number as index

dont need to store the lastname string anywhere in a lookup table bc the unique number is the lastname anyways. lastname = num2name(indexnumber)

will actual go faster than now. can make go even faster if do a onetime convert of existing last names to the same way. no lookups ever at at all then and is scaleable forever

[Ossian1488303077]

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

 

I've been meaning to post something like this for a while and this is a good place as any.

HOW SECOND LIFE NAMES ACTUALLY WORK:

All SL accounts have names in the same format. They are in two halves -

The "First Name" is a text field that can have around 30 letters, upper and lower case, with no spaces.

The "Last Name" is a NUMBER. This number is looked up in a database when your last name is displayed as a word. Basically, it's closer to a ZIP code than a name. 1 corresponds to Linden, 42 to Powers, 4823 to Mayo, etc. My last name is one of the last official ones and the number is 10910. All "single name" accounts have 10327 in this field, which is normally suppressed but returns "Resident" when a script specifically requests "LAST NAME".

Because of this it's a major process to have a custom last name as it needs to be added to the central database - it would be the equivalent itof incorporating a new town and having the Post Office give you a new ZIP code.

Meanwhile, I have seven alt accounts with single names. None of them has a number in their username and if you'll look at their display names you'li see their completely legible, properly capitalized first and last names which I chose for them myself. I doubt I'd have made those accounts if I had to pick last names from a list.

 I think you'll find the "Johnny563273"'s of today are the "john1978 Lastnames" of yesteryear, and they probably won't stick around that long. 

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Assuming what you say is true, it's *less* complicated than zip codes, because in zip codes the digits have specific meanings (first digit is group of states, next two is a region in that group, and last two are specific parts of that region). So there is less play -- each region has only 100 zip codes in it.

But if last names simply correspond to integers, even if they were limited to five digits (which would be unlikely), the number of available slots is in the tens of thousands.

[NaTaS Janus]

It was nice to see people with your same last name randomly...