Resident surname - lot of weird names around

[Iren Tinkel]

Just got question looking around at new created avatars and their names: why there was need to set for everyone surname Resident?

I just open my radar and look. Old names maybe silly also, but most of them are easy to remember kinda John Doe, Mary Jane, Jack Black. New names - its something crazy - john1215652, john58424454, john5845452245, john2131552, john251241, jonhdoe21255452, johndoe5428754212 (!!!!!!!!!!). Really i never saw around SO MUCH silly names before.

I need to say i dont use display names for some reasons:

1)old name, display name, group tag, titler - all together looks weird, just display names - not informative for me as seller

2)there is fashion to use for display names unreadable letters. it was kinda enough Group tag for that. and when i read my chat in crowdy place i get headache.

Some of my friends complain they cant choose decent name for alt cos surname Resident doesnt give so much variations but using double crazy names or numbers.

Please, Linden Lab, could you set back opportunity to choose surname? maybe display names are ok for somebody, but same surname for everyone may fill our world with really ridiculous names.

 

Edited: ppl gave me link to the JIRA about it. Not such a issue to be in JIRA but there is about 1800 voting on it and it shows opinion of 1800 regular SL citizens! just the way to be heard by Linden Lab

Vote for Surname

[Marigold Devin]

Although I think it's highly unlikely LL will revert back to having a selection of surnames on offer, I agree with you.  There are some unimaginative name/number combinations out there (although hats off to those residents who have created some great names - can't mention them here of course, that would be against ToS).

Having surnames like Fireguard, Sideways, Breadbin gave people inspiration on what to choose for a first name of course.

If LL were running out of surnames to use, there was certainly plenty of inspiration on various threads that got started on the old forums giving suggestions of new surnames.

[Luschious Nightfire]

I'm with you on the unreadable display names, I find it quite annoying. Surely a name is for recognition purposes, so why make it so hard to read it let alone recognize it?  Oh and the ultimate in cool.... write your name upside down or back to front.  Heehee I feel these people are just waaay to cool for the likes of me

[Coby Foden]

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Iren Tinkel wrote:

Please, Linden Lab, could you set back opportunity to choose surname? maybe display names are ok for somebody, but same surname for everyone may fill our world with really ridiculous names.

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That's what we are hoping for. The present "no last" names for new accounts is a mess.

Please go to: Bring Back Last Name Options!

Click "Vote" and "Watch". Maybe Linden Lab will do something, or not.

[Iren Tinkel]

oh thanks for info, i thought there must be some report about it. voted

[Dilbert Dilweg]

Display names are a pain in the arse. Can't search a display name in groups. pain in the arse tracking down the exact spelling of their login name ( capitol letters ) Because everything is reduced to small case in  name tags, and profiles.

However, I kind of like having the ability to change my DN for the fun of it......

[Freecilla Kuhn]

Like many of the unnecessary changes SL has made they have a tendency to forget why things were set up the way they were in the first place. They forgot that they were reasons and as soon as they change things the reasons hit us right in the headache over and over again.

My hope is that hey just might have been smart enough to leave the option open to go back to choosen last names so they used the "Resident" last name as a test which can easily be reverted back to the choose a last name options again, although we will still be left with a lot of people with the last name of Resident as a reminder to think before changing things.

The display names are another mess altogether that were not needed or wanted. I was worried that I may not remember who is who because of those but it turns out I didn't even see the "goofy letters" as display names coming. What a great way to make social networking less social.

 

[Luschious Nightfire]

I also dont get why those with surnames decide to use display names? Surely now that a surname has become a commodity it should be worn with pride, its a badge of honour, heehee.  It adds a sense of identity and belonging, I always notice another Nightfire, and we always end up chatting It is also a way of indicating age to a certain extent, as certian surnames were made available at certain periods, if I'm not mistaken all Nightfires are all four years old, so with time, they will become rarer and rarer.  SL does not have a leveling system and for that I am grateful, but surnames does kind off indirectly relate to a certain leveling system does it not? and at the end of the dya everyone loves bragging about their higher level, heehee

[Sassy Romano]

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Luschious Nightfire wrote:

  Oh and the ultimate in cool.... write your name upside down or back to front.  Heehee I feel these people are just waaay to cool for the likes of me

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I just refer to those as "person with upsidedown name" *shrugs*

[Venus Petrov]

Yup there are lots of odd names in SL.  Even some of  those that became members before the whole 'Resident' thing have  odd names.  Amusing names, too.

It is as it is and we just have to roll with it.

[Koltari]

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Dilbert Dilweg wrote:

Display names are a pain in the arse. Can't search a display name in groups. pain in the arse tracking down the exact spelling of their login name ( capitol letters ) Because everything is reduced to small case in  name tags, and profiles.

However, I kind of like having the ability to change my DN for the fun of it......

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This is quite annoying I do agree on that. security/rental systems come to mind...

And even if not really important I'd like a proper last name :matte-motes-not-even:

[Orca Flotta]

Most avies are more or less humanoid, at least the account holders are 100% human. And afaik there's like 99.999% of people in the world having a first and a last name. In some cultures it's the other way round, China, for example. Or Iceland where your fathers name automatically becomes your last name. Still we live in a system of family name and individual name. It's simple, it's proven, it works. Why LL decided to stray away from that perfect model, I can only guess.

Oh, and I have my guesses, but non of them are very flattering for the Lindens.

[Deltango Vale]

Current thinking is that the company has a physiological defect that prevents it from understanding common sense. I believe a leading neurology journal will soon publish an article on 'Lindenitis'.

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Deltango Vale wrote:

Current thinking is that the company has a physiological defect that prevents it from understanding common sense. I believe a leading neurology journal will soon publish an article on 'Lindenitis'.

---

Del, this particular defect is pretty well known and understood. It's the common failure of folks within a company to truly understand either their product or their customer. This is particularly true of engineering driven companies selling to non-technical markets. To be fair, I don't understand what SL is or what LL's customers want either. I only know what SL is for me, and what I want from LL.

I'm willing to allow that those of us who hang around in the forums are NOT representative of SL residents at large. It may be that the Lindens are seeing a bigger picture than we are, and that the cluelessness we see in them is partly our own.

SL seems to me to be an anomaly. It's not a classic console game, nor is it a social network like Facebook. So a good bit of the industry wisdom from those two markets simply doesn't apply here. And while it is a multiplayer environmnent, it's quite unlike things like WoW, there the scene and story crafting are largely done by company design teams who bring to bear both technological and psychological prowess in the crafting of compelling experiences.

So here sits SL, with content of varying from junk to art, with no cohesive internal story, no centrally crafted pleasure center rewards for achieving goals and no ability to direct content creation to ease the rendering burden. It's the Wild Wild West of virtual worlds and it may have attracted all the cowboys and girls it ever will. I just don't know.

I'm in general agreement with many folks here. The single name system completely ignores the cultural and personal value of names and makes me wonder if the heart of LL is entirely too geeky for SL to thrive or maybe even survive. Can't you just imagine some other company out there, currently using a single name system, getting excited about the prospect of putting a more human face on their product by allowing and encouraging a person friendly naming system?

And didn't it occur to anyone at LL that, with such a steep learning curve, it would be important for all viewers to be sufficiently similar so that any two residents could communicate with each other about how to climb that curve? Instead we have fragmentation in viewers that places hurdles all the way up the hill.

We all have our list of pet peeves, yet we're still here. And it may be precisely that loyalty (perhaps for lack of an alternative) that allows LL to remain so apparently clueless to us, and for us (or at least me) to perhaps remain clueless about SL.

[Knutz Scorpio]

It's my guess that LL restricted surnames to Resident so that SL will feel like one large happy family ... one large crossbreeding family

[Chronometria]

Interestingly, what hurts the most, is when someone tells me i dont have a surname and that resident doesnt even exist.

 

Most people i know have one and for some reason i`m not worth of it. "Resident" doesnt even have the strength of a fake surname and thats what makes me feel like a second class citizen sometimes.

 

Then you have the people who *still* cant see display names and call us by our logins.

 

*Edit* just noticed, look left, no surname even on the "official forum".

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Chronometria wrote:

Interestingly, what hurts the most, is when someone tells me i dont have a surname and that resident doesnt even exist.

 

Most people i know have one and for some reason i`m not worth of it. "Resident" doesnt even have the strength of a fake surname and thats what makes me feel like a second class citizen sometimes.

 

Then you have the people who *still* cant see display names and call us by our logins.

 

*Edit* just noticed, look left, no surname even on the "official forum".

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Precisely, Chronometria (which is a nifty name, btw ;-) I think LL showed a remarkable lack of humanity in their decision to abolish surnames. I just hope it wasn't because they had metrics that indicated they could make more money by attracting customers who also show a lack of humanity.

[Dillon Levenque]

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

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Deltango Vale wrote:

Current thinking is that the company has a physiological defect that prevents it from understanding common sense. I believe a leading neurology journal will soon publish an article on 'Lindenitis'.

---

Del, this particular defect is pretty well known and understood. It's the common failure of folks within a company to truly understand either their product or their customer.

---

I don't know about the 'product' part of that statement, but the 'customer' bit is spot on in my experience. When I worked in manufacturing we all thought we had these marvelous products. Innovations right and left. Let's add this, Let's add that. One time I had to fill in for Field Service and actually went to a customer's site to troubleshoot a problem. After one shift in the clean room I'd seen at least a dozen ways we could make things work better for what the customer was actually trying to do. It was embarrassing, really. Here these guys were, coming up with all these patchwork ways to get our stuff to match their process, when we could easily have done it for them.

When I got back I tried to sell the company on the idea that everyone—hardware engineering, software engineering, manufacturing, management—should have to make at least two working (as in where the machines were) customer visits a year. I bet it would have made a huge difference. The idea didn't fly. Sales assured everyone they could do that for us.

Maybe LL could make that work for them. They wouldn't even have to pay tier.

 

 

[wiked Anton]

i must admit i agree with you whole heartedly. i chose MY surname and now i have relatives everywhere:)

[Deej Kasshiki]

If one cares to go back and look at the pages and pages of comments on the way the Lab chose to implement display names it's not as if many of us didn't warn them of the possible unintended consequences. They chose to ignore our feedback because, once again, the Lab knew best. After they implemented diaplay names (along with a revamp of the whole signup/new user experience) and the numbers of completed signups rose the Lindens were convinced that they were correct after all. Sadly, while the numbers of people finishing the signup process rose, the numbers of people who actually logged in again didn't.

I don't blame display names for the fact that concurrency has remained flat (or dropped slightly) in the face of increasing completed signups. There are many reasons for that, IMO and those possible reasons have been raised and discussed on these forums for years. I do know that every single one of the new people I've helped since display names were introduced have at some point in their first weeks of joining have asked, "why can't I have a real last name?" Maybe the top Lindens should hang out more in world talking to their customers or reading various forums and blogs to get a feel for what we really want and need from SL.

I won't even get into all the nonsense names brought about by the abuse of Unicode and ASCII characters. Grrr... :smileymad:

[Freecilla Kuhn]

I'm willing to allow that those of us who hang around in the forums are NOT representative of SL residents at large. It may be that the Lindens are seeing a bigger picture than we are, and that the cluelessness we see in them is partly our own.

 

OK, I'm willing to allow that those of us who hang out in the forums ARE representative of SL residents at large as we care enough to be in the forums and hear from others and voice, question and rant to others. Many here have also mentioned they have had conversations about last names inworld with others. One voice in the forums is not really just one voice. As the old saying goes, when one person complains there are a hundred more that agree but can't be bothered.

Lindens seeing the bigger picture? Maybe so but not in this case since two names offers much more variation than one which would be needed if the bigger picture included a much bigger user base. The idea as Phil put it, to paraphrase was, no other system has two user names.... that's it, the hole phil osophy right there.

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Deej Kasshiki wrote:

If one cares to go back and look at the pages and pages of comments on the way the Lab chose to implement display names it's not as if many of us didn't warn them of the possible unintended consequences. They chose to ignore our feedback because, once again, the Lab knew best. After they implemented diaplay names (along with a revamp of the whole signup/new user experience) and the numbers of completed signups rose the Lindens were convinced that they were correct after all. Sadly, while the numbers of people finishing the signup process rose, the numbers of people who actually logged in again didn't.

I don't blame display names for the fact that concurrency has remained flat (or dropped slightly) in the face of increasing completed signups. There are many reasons for that, IMO and those possible reasons have been raised and discussed on these forums for years. I do know that

every single one

of the new people I've helped since display names were introduced have at some point in their first weeks of joining have asked, "why can't I have a real last name?" Maybe the top Lindens should hang out more in world talking to their customers or reading various forums and blogs to get a feel for what we really want and need from SL.

I won't even get into all the nonsense names brought about by the abuse of Unicode and ASCII characters. Grrr... :smileymad:

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LL can't be dense enough to not have taken into consideration that a lot of the new signups, right after the change was implemented, was actually people running to sign up single name alts with names they either wanted or didn't want anyone else getting.

Why couldn't the user name system be slightly modified to be able to include spaces?  Then anyone could have however many names they want... what's the big deal?

...Dres (Then, I could create a new account with the name Eurydice Colette Clytemnestra Dido Bathsheba Rabelais Patricia Cocteau Stone... is that bad?)

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Freecilla Kuhn wrote:

I'm willing to allow that those of us who hang around in the forums are NOT representative of SL residents at large. It may be that the Lindens are seeing a bigger picture than we are, and that the cluelessness we see in them is partly our own.

 

OK, I'm willing to allow that those of us who hang out in the forums ARE representative of SL residents at large as we care enough to be in the forums and hear from others and voice, question and rant to others. Many here have also mentioned they have had conversations about last names inworld with others. One voice in the forums is not really just one voice. As the old saying goes, when one person complains there are a hundred more that agree but can't be bothered.

Lindens seeing the bigger picture? Maybe so but not in this case since two names offers much more variation than one which would be needed if the bigger picture included a much bigger user base. The idea as Phil put it, to paraphrase was, no other system has two user names.... that's it, the hole phil osophy right there.

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Freecilla, I think you're probably right, but I don't KNOW. There may be some reason that single names are better, though I can't imagine what it is. I also can't imagine why LL does a skillion other things the way they do. I can wonder if they're clueless, but I don't KNOW it. The business landscape for games and social networks is exceptionally dynamic right now, and although I don't see SL as fitting well in either market, that's where all the money is going.

What if Phil's osophy isn't economically viable in the Facebook/Farmville, everything on a phone age?

[Iren Tinkel]

lol Chronometria, i dont find that Residents family is something kinda second class of citizens. we just talk about limits that it gives cos ppl cant choose name John and to get surname for that being John Cute for example. If he wants to be John he will be probably John5000 then - its hard to remember among other 4999 Johnes and it looks like prisoner number. Other ppl take another way - they choose name kinda PrettyGirlBelindaWalkingAroundAndLooking Resident - and its also hard to remember cos easy - just hard to read.

[Coby Foden]

To have our voice heard, please go to:

Bring Back Last Name Options!

Click both "Vote" and "Watch". 

Note: It is very important also to click "Watch" as that is what Linden Lab considers more than the plain "Vote".

There is a good chance that they will do something about it. Surely they also see by now that the single name system is not good at all. All good single names have run out a long time ago already and the only option for new accounts is to create some silly hard to remember user name.

I would also be very glad if they took the useless display names off. It wasn't so cool thing after all what they were thinking of. It just adds some senless clutter and junk.