Lets discuss - SL last names post from Rodvik Linden in the feeds.

[Dillon Levenque]

So they didn't fix it; I'd heard they had. A couple of sentences more would have been all they needed.

 

Thanks, C

[Charolotte Caxton]

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Dillon Levenque wrote:

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Demonsthenes wrote:

Thank you for the compliment, although in reality I had to add an extra letter as the name of choice was already taken. I had no idea at the time that a sharp dressed Demon would draw so much attention from certain ladies.

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Every girl crazy 'bout a sharp dressed Demon.

 

 

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Lol, he's kinda cute, too

[RoderickVaughn]

So.. after this change is implemented, will I be able to change my name from "RoderickVaughn Resident" to "Roderick Vaughn", as it should have been in the first place? Or will it have to be "RoderickVaughn Somethingelse"?

I hate the thought of having to start up a whole new avatar just to get the right name.

[Charolotte Caxton]

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RoderickVaughn wrote:

So.. after this change is implemented, will I be able to change my name from "RoderickVaughn Resident" to "Roderick Vaughn", as it should have been in the first place? Or will it have to be "RoderickVaughn Somethingelse"?

I hate the thought of having to start up a whole new avatar just to get the right name.

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No one knows yet, they are trying to come up with an Oh Wow plan.

[JustOneMore Loon]

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Charolotte Caxton wrote:

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RoderickVaughn wrote:

So.. after this change is implemented, will I be able to change my name from "RoderickVaughn Resident" to "Roderick Vaughn", as it should have been in the first place? Or will it have to be "RoderickVaughn Somethingelse"?

I hate the thought of having to start up a whole new avatar just to get the right name.

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No one knows yet, they are trying to come up with an Oh Wow plan.

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Don't worry- you can use a nickname to make your name look right and then we can all vote and make you look very silly with an insulting title.  The best thing will be when most of the screen will be covered with out names.

[161488303349]

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AliceOneders wrote:

So regarding existing residents who joined after the the first/last name fields were discontinued:  just allowing them to add a new last name will likely not address many of the issues involved, especially for those who picked letters and numbers in their username or who picked a series of letters that would not work as a first name.  To address the various issues, LL would have to allow those residents to potentially change their entire names.

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this is actual a very good point. quite a few people choose a firstname using numbers and letters as fillers so that they can have an easily recognised name. example. xxSarahxx 10Ben10 oOJasmineOo etc. Were they able to change their name in some way, would be some wanting to change their firstname as well to get rid of the fillers and just be Sarah Kissings, Ben Tens, Jasmine Ogilvy etc

[Charolotte Caxton]

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JustOneMore Loon wrote:

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Charolotte Caxton wrote:

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RoderickVaughn wrote:

So.. after this change is implemented, will I be able to change my name from "RoderickVaughn Resident" to "Roderick Vaughn", as it should have been in the first place? Or will it have to be "RoderickVaughn Somethingelse"?

I hate the thought of having to start up a whole new avatar just to get the right name.

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No one knows yet, they are trying to come up with an Oh Wow plan.

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Don't worry- you can use a nickname to make your name look right and then we can all vote and make you look very silly with an insulting title.  The best thing will be when most of the screen will be covered with out names.

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Again, not directed at me, right?

[161488303349]

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RoderickVaughn wrote:

So.. after this change is implemented, will I be able to change my name from "RoderickVaughn Resident" to "Roderick Vaughn", as it should have been in the first place? Or will it have to be "RoderickVaughn Somethingelse"?

I hate the thought of having to start up a whole new avatar just to get the right name.

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^^ that. i really do hope that linden will give u and everyone else in ur position exactly this opportunity

[161488303349]

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Demonsthenes wrote:

I can agree with having Resident as a surname, among us, there is a certain honor at having been introduced to this world as a second class citizen. It has caused some of us to learn how to cope with discrimination based solely on the fact that we are not allowed proper names. Being able to have our last names reflect this dark time of Second Life's history would be a kind of badge, I would think.

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i tend to agree. if i must have a lastname and cant choose to only have a first name then i will stay with the resident family

[JustOneMore Loon]

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Charolotte Caxton wrote:

Again, not directed at me, right?

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Not directed at you- just trying to have a sense of humor about this Cluster....

[Charolotte Caxton]

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JustOneMore Loon wrote:

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Charolotte Caxton wrote:

Again, not directed at me, right?

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Not directed at you- just trying to have a sense of humor about this Cluster....

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Understood, and agree.

It's just that when you hit reply on my posts, your posts say "Reply to Charolotte Caxton" at the top, which is totally fine with me, by the way.

[Coby Foden]

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Charolotte Caxton wrote:

No one knows yet, they are trying to come up with an Oh Wow plan.

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Oh Wow! My appetite is wetted now.. can't wait..

 

Or maybe not.. :smileyfrustrated: :smileytongue:

[Ian Undercroft]

It's pleasing to note that the titles proposal has been as well thought through, is equally as bonkers, and is as much demanded by the community, as was the introduction of gibberish single usernames and moronic and ever changing display names.

[Gavin Hird]

My take on this:

• Bring back Last Names
• Give people the ability to change names (for a fee)
• If you need to recycle names, purge the user DB of anyone who has not been logged in say for more than 3 years
• No Titles – reeks of games, segregation and stereotyping

[Qie Niangao]

I truly Do Not Care what they do with names.

You may wonder why I respond to this thread at all, if I Do Not Care. Two reasons:

 

1. Whatever dire consequences are predicted for every conceivable naming scheme, the poor schmuck forced to choose may be relieved to know that some of us Do Not Care.
2. If this last name business is intended to be a great boon to all of Second Life, the poor schmuck harboring that illusion should be aware that some of us Do Not Care.

I hope this nonsense can be disposed of quickly so we can get on to features and fixes that actually matter.

[Ceka Cianci]

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Charolotte Caxton wrote:

Hello, Levenque.

Nope. The account creation page tells you to remember your user name as that is what you will use to login, it makes no indication that it will be what your character is forever known as, in fact, it would lead me to believe that it was just a login user name, since it says username and username to login.

 

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for me it say's exactly what it is.. it is my user name..just like any program or chat or game would have us make..

the name we use..

some programs and chats and games want you to log in with an email..LL are just saying you will be using your user name for this one to log in..

[JustOneMore Loon]

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Gavin Hird wrote:

• If you need to recycle names, purge the user DB of anyone who has not been logged in say for more than 3 years

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no. No. no. Unequivical NO.  This can lead to people THINKING they are talking to their old friends but not. Old users with brands can be missrepresented as CURRENT purveyors. and it's completely unneccesary with the last name paradime,.

[Gavin Hird]

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JustOneMore Loon wrote:

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Gavin Hird wrote:

• If you need to recycle names, purge the user DB of anyone who has not been logged in say for more than 3 years

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no. No. no. Unequivical NO.  This can lead to people THINKING they are talking to their old friends but not. Old users with brands can be missrepresented as CURRENT purveyors. and it's completely unneccesary with the last name paradime,.

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The previous implementation required the "first last" name combination to be unique, which quickly leads to exhaustion of name space for popular (and common) name combinations. So unless there is a solution to this, freeing old name space may be an option. 

Ideally, there should be a unique, but never displayed login ID that was the owner of all your identities (main and alts), and you deciced which identit(ies) to invoke on logon.  Meaning you could actually log on multiple identities at the same time (your main, your business, your cheating lover....) or at any time you were logged in on demand. 

It could also mean that the inventory was shared between identities, owned by the common ID.  

... I suppose that would mean major code changes. :-O

[Deltango Vale]

Going back to the original post, I am reminded that this thread, now 10 pages long, is the result of a tweet on the MSL feed by the CEO, picked up by a resident and posted on the SL GD Forum. Bad habits die hard at Linden Lab - especially the Marie Antoinette attitude of "Let them eat cake". One would think after all these years and so many mistakes, the company would actively seek the knowledge and experience of its userbase.

Nothing has been posted on the SL Blog for over a month. Meanwhile, valuable insights by residents are scattered across the web (SLU, NWN, private fora, business blogs, resident blogs, Flickr, inworld IMs etc.) as Marie Antoinette paces back and forth in her ivory tower waiting for the coders in the basement to "bang on things" so that she can gleefully toss them to us from her balcony. When the big day finally arrives, we reach up our arms and catch...gloves with six fingers, electric cheese straighteners, backwards mirror sunglasses, liver-flavored breath mints and the occasional anvil or ship's anchor, which wipes out an entire village community.

Instead of tweeting that the company is working on the names problem, how about a thread in the SLB that goes something like this:

Resident Names Problem - Request for Advice

Dear Residents Experts,

We face some conceptual and technical problems in restoring resident names. Our immediate goal is to reinstate first and last names. This creates opportunities for additional features related to resident names (titles, partners, family or business names etc.).

We are considering the following problems and features:

• adding new fields (title, clan, merchant name etc.)
• enabling residents to retain existing single names
• enabling all residents to change their names at any time
• converting an existing 'display name' into a title
• enabling residents to display only part of their names/titles (eg. first name only)
• creating a middle name (first, middle, last)
• limiting the size of the name fields to 10 characters
• limiting the composition of the names fields to letters and numbers only

We welcome your suggestions and advice. We wish to complete the first stage of this consultation process by the end of February. We will then post a draft of the plan at the beginning of March for review and further discussion. We hope to have the final draft available by the end of March.

Thank you for your valuable enthusiasm and expertise. We couldn't do it without you

Rodvik

[Gavin Hird]

I don't get it – the silence in the blog is stunning. Not to belittle sluniverse, but I feel that both Rodvik and other Lindens are more active over there than in their own forums. 

The daily Flickr posting to the blog, while nice, is starting become pathetic. 

So you are absolutely right. I too caught the twitter message and the sharing on his profile; but that was pure chance. 

[Dillon Levenque]

Deltango, that makes far too much sense.

[Charolotte Caxton]

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Ceka Cianci wrote:

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Charolotte Caxton wrote:

Hello, Levenque.

Nope. The account creation page tells you to remember your user name as that is what you will use to login, it makes no indication that it will be what your character is forever known as, in fact, it would lead me to believe that it was just a login user name, since it says username and username to login.

 

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for me it say's exactly what it is.. it is my user name..just like any program or chat or game would have us make..

the name we use..

some programs and chats and games want you to log in with an email..LL are just saying you will be using your user name for this one to log in..

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Good point, and I can completely agree with and understand how from persons with prior chat and computer games experience that could be obvious.

However, in the Second Life environment, we have all the oldies, like you and I, with first and last names, and then when new users come in, they are forced to choose a single name. Charlotte is taken. So is Charolotte. Vivian, Rebecca, Rebekka, Rebeka, etc. So we end up with persons named Charolote1999. While this may be perfectly acceptable if everyone else in the system had similar names, it is a glaring anomaly (now a standard) to the rest of the population.

Point being that the current name system creates two classes, the old name and the new name system. The lack of a standard system is the root of the issue. If we were all Bob123, we would probably not care as much as we do now.

That is just my opinion though, based on how vocal so many persons are about the last name issue. 

[Demonsthenes]

So why not just let the old names die out? If Second Life does nothing, eventually everyone with last names will eventually die out and be things of the past. Single names will be the norm and display names will be what everyone uses and sees. We can have a virtual world filled with bob1234's who call themselves John. Hello, John. Hello, John.

[Charolotte Caxton]

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Demonsthenes wrote:

So why not just let the old names die out? If Second Life does nothing, eventually everyone with last names will eventually die out and be things of the past. Single names will be the norm and display names will be what everyone uses and sees. We can have a virtual world filled with bob1234's who call themselves John. Hello, John. Hello, John.

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I suppose. 

I guess they could just have all the default avatars have names associated with them and we can all be video game characters. 

Just because thousands of human beings that love Second Life are spending real human hours asking for something that was should not in any way be seen as a logical obvious statement of what the users want.

Like Qie Niangao, maybe all the other thousands just don't care.

[Maitimo]

There are two issues with naming in SL.

First is that the sign up process makes new users think that the username they choose is a private login only, it doesn't make it clear that everyone else in SL will be able to see it, and will use it to identify you. This need s to be changed to clarify that the username is also a visible avatar name and cannot be hidden.

As far as making first/last names, all they need to do is allow an underscore character as an acceptable part of a username, and then render it as a space in-world. One field only is needed but it can (optionally) look like more than one.