[opensource-dev] display names = the end of 1.x viewers?

[Lance Corrimal]

On Wednesday 18 August 2010 10:20:03 Henri Beauchamp wrote:


> Why restricting new user names to "Resident" ?

It's not a restriction.

the whole thing, as far as i can see, boils down to this:

there's the login, and the display name.

the login is _one_ word, chosen at account creation, and will stay the same 
forever. For example, it could be something like andromeda02 or whatever.
the display name can be anything, and can be changed once a week.
So if you would create a new account for whatever reasons, you could choose 
feedledumthebard as your login, and set your display name to "Henri Beauchamp 
the 2nd."

What will happen to old accounts is that their login will be constructed by 
using their avatar name, lowercase, and connecting the two pieces with a dot, 
and by default their Display name will be the original avatar name.

So, in my case, my login will be lance.corrimal and my dosplay name will be 
Lance Corrimal.

and in an old viewer with no display name support it will stay that way.

Now what about the fictive new account that you created?
the login name is feedledumthebard.
the display name is "Henri Beauchamp the 2nd"
and in an old viewer with no support for display names it'll show as:
"feedledumthebard Resident".


> 
> It will only make the choice for the first name more dificult, since
> "John" will be taken by the first new resident registering it, and then
> others will have no other choice than to use numbers or weird characters
> to register and we will end up with IRC-like names like John12345 and
> John54321, which will make it only more difficult to distinguish all the
> Johns from each others in-world (for identification purpose, such as
> objects ownership, anti-griefing and stuff).


only for their LOGIN, which will not be the Display Name.

Display names do NOT have to be unique.

Think of display names as "group titles that don't need a group to be in", and 
it becomes more clear.

The fact that display names don't have to be unique opens the biggest can of 
worms though.

What keeps me from, lets say, creating a throwaway alt, setting its Display 
Name to "Stiletto Moody", and hanging out at that famous shoe shop telling 
people that the place will close down and that all rights to the designs have 
been sold to (whatever the place is that will sell copybotted versions).
Other than the fear of having that throwaway alt getting permanently banned in 
maybe a year or two when the g-team gets around to doing it.

What keeps me from setting the display name to the name of a well-known land 
baron, hanging out at their hub, telling prospective tenants that there's no 
free land but "so and so that we're cooperating with still has a few free 
homesteads"...?

The fact that the login name can be seen in the profile does NOT mean that 
people will understand the difference, or pay attention to it.

Keep in mind that there are LONG TIME RESIDENTS who still don't know how to 
read a notecard. That paints a pretty black prospect of the mental capacities 
of the generic noobie...



IF those display names arenot shot down before rollout (hopefully they are) 
there needs a BIG section on discovery island covering them, and how to avoid 
being scammed.


bye,
LC