Searching Group Members: use display or account name?

[SLCGGroupMaintenance]

Hello and thank you for helping find an answer to my question.

I have a list of names and many go back years and years. These names need to be located in a number of groups of which I am an officer. When I search my alt accounts name in a group it comes up under my display name and not my full account name. Does this mean I should be searching the groups using the most current display name?

my methodology has been to use the SL People search with the name I am given and then if the name provided to me by SL Search has changed, presumably because it is a 'display' name, I search the groups using the display. Does this sound right? If i were to search my current group using my account name I would not show up. Interestingly, if I use SL Search for either my Display name or account name it finds me.

thank you again.

Edited April 3, 2022 by SLCGGroupMaintenance

[SLCGGroupMaintenance]

Bumping

[Qie Niangao]

What is "SL Search" vs "SL People search"? Are we talking about in-viewer searches or search.secondlife.com? If it's viewer search, does it matter which viewer?

Either way, though, it seems to work for me simply ignoring the display names altogether. (It's mightily annoying that they're the identifiers in the group Members list, but even there the filtering box seems to work fine with legacy names.)

[Aishagain]

I may be naiive but I had always assumed that any search algorithm would operate using the UUID or avatar/account key and that was the only identifier properly linked to the account user/legacy name. Display names are surely just one of many variables linked to that UUID.

[Rowan Amore]

Display names are not tied to an avatar AFAIK.  I just changed an alt's name to Rowan Amore, no problem.  When searching, it would seem the legacy name would be the one to give you the correct results. 

[MoiraKathleen]

On 4/2/2022 at 8:25 PM, SLCGGroupMaintenance said:

Interestingly, if I use SL Search for either my Display name or account name it finds me.

I only found this to be true if the display name was close enough (or unique enough as well as being close enough) to the legacy name, so that the legacy name was enough of a match to show up near the top of the search results.  However, searching for a display name like "Mist" did not result in the avatar's legacy name being returned at all, as "Mist" is not the beginning   part of her legacy name.  (This is using Legacy Search in Kokua viewer).

 I have my preferences for nametags set to show both legacy (user) name and display name.  I don't know if that also affects how names are displayed in groups, but when I look at a list of group members, if the account has a display name I see the display name followed by the legacy name in parentheses.  

I think the only way to be certain that you are seeing the correct account in people search is to use the legacy name. 

[SLCGGroupMaintenance]

thank you for the posts. I must admit I still do not know what to do.

 

When i search my account name in a Group I am a member of, i do not show up. If i search my display name I do show up. I am trying not to do double work and searching display and account names for each person literally doubles the work.

[Qie Niangao]

I'm still not sure what you're trying to do here. If you're searching the "Group Profile" window's "Roles & Members" section's "MEMBERS" tab, you can be found under "SLCGGroupMaintenance" which is your username minus the ".resident" part. At least at the moment that's also your Display Name.

This may not be what you're trying to do though.

Edited April 11, 2022 by Qie Niangao

[SLCGGroupMaintenance]

12 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

I'm still not sure what you're trying to do here. If you're searching the "Group Profile" window's "Roles & Members" section's "MEMBERS" tab, you can be found under "SLCGGroupMaintenance" which is your username minus the ".resident" part. At least at the moment that's also your Display Name.

This may not be what you're trying to do though.

thanks for helping!

 

i am actually searching my alt account that is a member in the same group. when I search my alts display name "bruckner"  i show up. when i search my account name "bruckner.dreddmor" i do not show up. Does this mean I should only use display names when searching the "Group Profile" window's "Roles & Members" section's "MEMBERS" tab?

[MoiraKathleen]

20 minutes ago, SLCGGroupMaintenance said:

thanks for helping!

 

i am actually searching my alt account that is a member in the same group. when I search my alts display name "bruckner"  i show up. when i search my account name "bruckner.dreddmor" i do not show up. Does this mean I should only use display names when searching the "Group Profile" window's "Roles & Members" section's "MEMBERS" tab?

It might be that "bruckner" is enough to bring up the account name, as both the display name and the account name start with the same letters.  When I search for an account name in a group, I always start with the account's first name without the last name, and then few the 1 or several account names that are returned by the search (not with the firstname.lastname). 

Based on what I just tried in a group member list, if your display name was "david", I don't believe it would return "bruckner.dreddmor" but would probably return some other account name(s) that started with "david" if there was one, otherwise would return no results.  I searched in a group member list for "John" for someone whose display name starts with "John" and did not get any results returned.  I then searched for "Jon" which is their account first name, and the search returned them correctly. 

As I said earlier, I do have my preferences set to always show both display name and account name in chat - I don't know if this affects how the search works in group member lists. 

My suggestion would be to search by account name, but enter just the first part up to the "." and only add the "." and last name if just the first name returned so many rows of accounts with that first name that it is unmanageable to visually find the one you are looking for.  

[Rowan Amore]

Thousands of people could, conceivably,  have the exact same display name.   I'm not sure why your user name isn't coming up in group search but only your display name.  Did you try it without the . between the names?   @Bruckner Dreddmor

[Odaks]

1 hour ago, Rowan Amore said:

Thousands of people could, conceivably,  have the exact same display name.   I'm not sure why your user name isn't coming up in group search but only your display name.  Did you try it without the . between the names?   @Bruckner Dreddmor

I have always had problems, when searching on any of the names listings, using the old firstname.lastname formats as a search terrm. Stripping out the full stop (period) and leaving a space there instead nearly always produces successful results.

There is a very good chance that Rowan's suggestion will solve your search problems.  

[SLCGGroupMaintenance]

I searched for Bruckner Dreddmor and did not find myself in the group. Again I only found myself typing in Bruckner or bruckner which happens to be my display name. I wish I could email the Lindens to get a definitive answer. I am really dreading having to go back and search over 200 names again because I wasn't doing it correctly the first time.

[SLCGGroupMaintenance]

P.S. im using Firestorm if that matters

[SLCGGroupMaintenance]

On 4/11/2022 at 11:33 PM, MoiraKathleen said:

It might be that "bruckner" is enough to bring up the account name, as both the display name and the account name start with the same letters.  When I search for an account name in a group, I always start with the account's first name without the last name, and then few the 1 or several account names that are returned by the search (not with the firstname.lastname). 

Based on what I just tried in a group member list, if your display name was "david", I don't believe it would return "bruckner.dreddmor" but would probably return some other account name(s) that started with "david" if there was one, otherwise would return no results.  I searched in a group member list for "John" for someone whose display name starts with "John" and did not get any results returned.  I then searched for "Jon" which is their account first name, and the search returned them correctly. 

As I said earlier, I do have my preferences set to always show both display name and account name in chat - I don't know if this affects how the search works in group member lists. 

My suggestion would be to search by account name, but enter just the first part up to the "." and only add the "." and last name if just the first name returned so many rows of accounts with that first name that it is unmanageable to visually find the one you are looking for.  

i enabled usernames under the "general" tab and now when I search Dreddmor my account shows up with both my display name and full account name. I guess we have a solution!