In the past 24 hours there has been positive news by Rodvik Linden announcing from his web SL profile that SL last names will be hopefully coming back in early 2012. Rodvik says early January for the roll out plans and when that happens there will be extra features with it. In the mean time its still under active discussion at the lab but at least we now have hope for last names again.
Update Comment
rodvik.linden cool. Just to be clear Jan is when we will be giving a timeline/ plans on what we will be doing 🙂 Expect Q1 2012 for it actually to be done.
Post by Rodvik
What do you think about last names coming back?
Daniel Voyager 
I think it’s great news. Really good!
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I’m so happy!!!!
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Woooooooot !
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Mixed feelings, some good leaving, hopeful replaced by better ones if possible and at least a Ceo that shares his visions about Sl!
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Too much of this crazy pandering to the customers is not a healthy position to take at Linden Labs.
If Rodvik and his underlings wish to keep their jobs they’d better get back to randomly ticking us all off with crazy Dilbert-boss moves, like in the bad-old-days of M. Linden’s peak of power.
😉
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Before we get our hopes up too high though, we might want to read this from the relevant JIRA:
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ProductTeam Linden added a comment – 01/Nov/11 1:18 PM
It’s clear there is a lot of interest in SVC-7125. The intent was for users to specify their last name using the Display Names feature found in users’ profiles, which most Viewers now support. For those that haven’t used Display Names yet, you can also set them on the web: https://my.secondlife.com/settings/profile.
Know that we hear you and value your passion and that we are currently reviewing some of the decisions that were made with the username /Display Names implementation.
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Their idea of bringing back last names might not be what we users of the platform understand it as.
That response does imply that they get it, but its also lacking in clarity just enough to be open to alternative interpretations (and the response actually created a bit of uproar when it came out).
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I wonder what the “extra features” they’re wanting to add are. oO
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Further update confirmation today…
Rodvik.Linden “cool. Just to be clear Jan is when we will be giving a timeline/ plans on what we will be doing Expect Q1 2012 for it actually to be done.”
Yay!!!!!
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Wonderful:) As for extra features – how about a one shot deal for ‘Residents’ to change theirs? I think I saw that on one of the Jiras….anyway, Thanks Rodvik =^^=
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I hope it means last names really return, *and* that those who came to SL when last names weren’t available will be able to change their names, rather than being stuck as mumble130882122 Resident.
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Haha! It really was a a downgrade wasn’t 🙂
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Great news Daniel 🙂
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maybe salutations and honorifics ???
like Her Royal Majesty Janet Helena Theodopolis Guinevere Belmont, Duchess of Derwent, Queen of the High Country, Supreme Governor of Delaney Colonies, Empress of the Beacons and Really Nice Person
and her consort Mr Jimmy Franklin Wiggles-Bottom IV
(:
extra honorifics only 250L a month 😀
srs tho i think will be good. just hope that is a choice and not all one or all the other. so that ppl can choose one or two names as they like
simple honorifics be cool. like Mr Ms Dr etc. same for RL quals. like Ph D. LLB etc
hyphenated last names be quite cool for ppl who partner up as well.
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We’ll just have to see what happens now. The idea of display names wasn’t bad in itself and a lot of users seem to have fun with it. Personaly I find it a pain, people names changing randomly, different names showing up in different places, names that can’t be read and so on all make communication and group management more complicated. I often end up simply ignoring them (which I don’t want to do as it seems rude).
It will be interesting to see what they come up with, I think it’s probably quiet a complicated thing to implement well.
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As i only use show display names, i really agree that some of them are completely impossible to read at all.
I always check their profiles then to see their user names and ill answer to them in that way,
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That’s funny you know… Here is what I wrote as a ranting, back in the days when display names have been implemented (see: http://sldev.free.fr/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=399&p=1547#p1547 ):
” In fact, the reason why LL implemented display names is just because they think that they will get more users registering to SL if the registration form only got one box to fill in with a username of their choice… LL forgot two things: since there is only one field for the username (instead of two fields with legacy names, one for the first name and another for the last name), the potential new residents that were giving up before with the old registration process will still give up on the new registration form after entering a few variations of a username (try registering “John”, and you’ll see if it’s not taken already…). They also forgot that if a person is not willing to spend some time to fill up the registration form, they will not bother with SL either and will give up after the first login never to come back again (the learning curve for the viewer and world features in general is much more demanding than the effort to fill up a simple form with two fields for the avatar name…).
The very damaging result of this very stupid idea of some pretty ignorant and illogical person (or group of persons) in LL’s staff, is that now you will have John1234 and John1324 on the grid, and good luck to distinguish them from their username !…
Another problem is that people won’t be happy with IRC-like names in SL, and that’s why LL made out the whole idea of display names, also arguing that people always wanted to be able to change their name (when the actual need was to be able to choose whatever lastname you want when registering a new avatar, like you can do on almost all OpenSim grids)…”
Once more, I could say to LL: “I told you !…”
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I’m cautiously hopeful that this will be what we expect and not, as usual, an unmitigated disaster which is done so backwards that it makes things worse rather than better. I also hope it’s actually not a smokescreen to blind us to $change being done to the world which damages so much that it renders the world less interesting or useful; again, as is often the case.
I believe that Rod truly does want to return SL to its roots. But the entire lab and all of history is stacked against him and I cannot afford to be emotionally invested in SL again. It has earned me nothing but pain over the past 5 years and I just can’t believe anything any Linden has to say anymore. In descending order of trust, there are criminals, insurance salesmen, politicians, and then Linden Labs.
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