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Create a surname option


HalAngers
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HalAngers wrote:

Inworlds enables residents to pick a first name AND a surname.

Why doesn't Second Life do this too? It would be a popular move?

You may not be aware of this, but until late 2010 every account picked a first name and a last name. I joined in September 2010, shortly before they removed that nameing system. My first name is Syo, my surname is Emerald.

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HalAngers wrote:

Inworlds enables residents to pick a first name AND a surname.

Why doesn't Second Life do this too? It would be a popular move?

As Syo pointed out, SL did offer that abilllty, but withdrew it for one reason or another. Now anyone who signs up gets a surname of "Resident".

It is a popular argument ("SL should bring it back!"), but I (and others) don't see that happening soon. I signed up when it was offered., hence Bulloch is my surname.

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HalAngers wrote:

Inworlds enables residents to pick a first name AND a surname.

Why doesn't Second Life do this too? It would be a popular move?

Second Life last names are actually only a numerical value that is looked up on a database table - the actual word isn't anywhere in your avatar information and there's apparently no good place to put it. For instance, my "last name" is actually 10910, which corresponds to "Tennyson" on the database. Custom last names for an ordinary user were never an option after the very earliest days of Second Life because it would make the database very unwieldy.

Either Inworldz uses a different file format or they aren't concerned about the size of the last name database at this point in their development.

 

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I agree that it would be a popular move, but if you do a forum search on this topic, you'll find a few discussions that make it sound unlikely if not impossible to happen.

At this stage, the best you can do is sign up as "FirstnameSurname" and then set your display name to set it out properly with the space and any other punctuation. 

 

Edited to add: It is a real pity - I loved going 'round the grid and discovering my "sibling" Sweetwaters...made a few great friendships that way.

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The “space” is an ASCII character just exactly like every other ASCII character. It would have taken very little coding to say in the sign up, one space allowed, not the first character and not the last character. Its still just one string of ASCII characters, just like the new sign up is, just one word, but it would look like first and last names and be used the same too.

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Teagan Tobias wrote:

It would have taken very little coding

Sorry to pick on you but I love that phrase.  You would be amazed at how convoluted some of the simplest changes can be.  Unless I had intimate knowledge of every place a space is parsed in the code, I would never make that assumption again.  32 aka 20 aka 00100000 is much more than just an unsigned char in a string.

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Coding issues aside (and yeah, it's frightening how changing one little thing somewhere can have ramifications in places you had forgotten even existed)...

The worst thing LL did is enforce the "Resident" surname. My main account has a proper surname, but I really don't mind just having a username on my younger alts like this one. It's workable if not ideal.

What I do mind is having that ridiculous "Resident" tag added to the end of it!

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