Making an alt or specifically first impressions for a new account

[Pussycat Catnap]

I wish there was a way to 'hand back' a name of an alt you no longer want. If there was I would likely have a few dozen more alts made and deleted over the years...

As is... I have long strongly suspected that a vast number of very good names were forever lost to SL the day we switched to single names... as people made accounts just to see what names they could get... and then never used them. I think I've got about 6 of those... I don't even remember most of them... and I made a LOT less than some folks I saw because this issue occurred to me pretty quickly.

I don't think any of us actually believed SL would later refuse to undo the single name issue...

 

[Coby Foden]

There are many Social Islands and there many Learning Islands. Quick look into the map shows 9 Social Islands and 10 Learning Islands.
Anybody can go to the Social Islands. The Learning Islands are reserved only for new accounts, so the oldbies cannot go there.

In Social Island 2 I noticed one guy wearing some very noisy attachment spamming the area. The few other what I checked seemed to be quite peaceful places.

[Lewis Luminos]

5 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

 

I don't think any of us actually believed SL would later refuse to undo the single name issue...

 

All they ever really needed to do was to allow a single dot in a username, provided that it's not the first or the last character.  Then effectively, anyone who wanted a last name could have one. Wouldn't work now, though, with the Resident thing. But that's what they should have done.

[Pussycat Catnap]

3 hours ago, Lewis Luminos said:

All they ever really needed to do was to allow a single dot in a username, provided that it's not the first or the last character.  Then effectively, anyone who wanted a last name could have one. Wouldn't work now, though, with the Resident thing. But that's what they should have done.

It's like one of the first programs you will learn to write in a coding class... string manipulation.

They could add a simple bit of code to SL to keep both single and multi names.

 

something akin to:

if (!displayName) {

screenName = firstName;

if (lastName == "Resident") screenName += "";

else screenName += (" " + lastName);

} else screenName = displayName;

 

Everybody who currently has resident keeps it, future accounts would have lastnames... and one choice among the lastnames would be "none" that would set it to "Resident".

 

They could add to this... a paid serve to swap inventories of two accounts - regardless of perms. Both accounts would be required to have two-factor authentication and use the same email and same 'payment info on file' on them for the service to be used. Essentially this would be a "retire my old account and move to a new one" service...

- it could come with two warnings on it:

1. Pick up everything you rezzed in SL, it won't be swapped unless it is in inventory.

2. Anything given or sold to others will refer to the old account. If you wish to be contacted - you will need to note that in your old account profile.

- Because I suspect LL's database is so messed up it can't handle a simple pointer change from one UUID to another... otherwise they would have done that LONG ago...

 

Edited March 17, 2018 by Pussycat Catnap

[Lewis Luminos]

@Pussycat Catnap I'll have to trust you on the code  But I really like that inventory swap idea.  I think it would have to be an "all or nothing" thing - no sending of single items, just the whole inventory at once, in one direction, one time only. Otherwise it would be open to abuse.

[Grumpity Linden]

8 hours ago, Cindy Evanier said:

So now my question is how is the decision made on where these portals lead because surely it is not sensible to just go through the first one and get kicked back to social island.

Cindy, we do make an effort to avoid that.  Would be super helpful to know which location that was.  Thanks!

[Cindy Evanier]

10 minutes ago, Grumpity Linden said:

Cindy, we do make an effort to avoid that.  Would be super helpful to know which location that was.  Thanks!

It was social Island 8 but I can PM you the club location.  I would rather not say it here

[Pussycat Catnap]

4 hours ago, Lewis Luminos said:

@Pussycat Catnap I'll have to trust you on the code  But I really like that inventory swap idea.  I think it would have to be an "all or nothing" thing - no sending of single items, just the whole inventory at once, in one direction, one time only. Otherwise it would be open to abuse.

Yes that's exactly what I was thinking. Couple it with perhaps "one of the two accounts will be 'locked' for 6 months. Essentially you "pay" to ban one of your alts.

I'd do it like this.

You pick an account to transfer from, and one to transfer to. Everything in the inventory of the from gets handed to the to, and everything in the to gets handed to the from... and then the "from" is an account that is "banned from SL" for 6 months.

Anything actually rezzed stays owned by who it was owned by... (having the system scan the entire grid's database for all things belonging to UUID "somebody" in a modern database would take... about 0.1ms... but SL isn't a modern database...) so this service would have to come with a big warning screen you have to click through a few times telling you "hey you're about to LOSE everything you have rezzed in SL... are you OK with that? Go pick it up if not."

And then an "are you really sure about this?" screen...

And... once you do it... to undo it, you'd have to "prove to LLs" that both your accounts had been hacked, through the 2-factor authentication system.
(it is now known to be possible to hack 2-factor authentication... it requires some serious shenanigans that are a bit similar to a pack of guys in sunglasses in a van just to the left of your smartphone... but it can be done - basically is somebody has hacked your two-factor authentication you have much bigger problems than your SL account... you have problems that end in places like GITMO or meeting some of Putin's friends in the "vaping" or Concrete industry).

 

Edited March 18, 2018 by Pussycat Catnap