Get Rid of Name Exclusivity

[angelicdragonpuppy]

This is just my interpretation of the whole aliases / titles thing, so feel free to do your own mockups, but I see it working like this.

 

This is my dragon, Fireblighted. He's the only dragon in the game that is, or can be, called Fireblighted.

 

Now imagine you have your own dragon. Could be named, unnamed, whatever. The point is, he CAN'T be called Fireblighted, right?

 

But if you have ALIASES, you get...

 

Now, this isn't a perfect fix. You would still either be staring at a bald code floating over your ideal name, or you'd have to put something there. Obviously this isn't ideal in all situations, but for most cases it DOES open up options. 

 

 

You could do things like:

 

Of Misk's Court

(Fireblighted)

 

First in Golden

(Fireblighted)

 

Awaits a Mate

(Fireblighted)

 

Or whatever other random name floats your boat. The point is, you would have that name you desire beneath. Essentially the "name" would become YOUR place to put aliases / other info, while people who have the names they like would use the aliases as such. For example, I might do:

 

Fireblighted

(The Firstborn)

 

Fireblighted

(I)

 

Fireblighted

(STOP BREEDING TO THAT ONE MAGEIA)

 

 

You get the idea. Now, if people don't want to see those random names above their chosen "alias," maybe there could be a hide names toggle? It's not ideal, though. I guess it would defer to real names if the dragons in question don't have aliases to display?

 

At any rate, as much as it needs to be fleshed out, I see a lot of potential in this.

Edit: imagine if for unnamed dragons, the alias showed in place of the name. THAT would be pretty close to unlimited names, while still not interfering with /n/ or collecting original names or what have you. A show code toggle could check for inbreeding.

Edited March 22, 2021 by angelicdragonpuppy

[Tini]

My view is that if its anything to do with showing inbred, its not going to happen. TJ doesn't want to mark anything as inbred because it implies there's something wrong with the dragon if you do that, when there's not. Yes he can of course change his mind, but I think that's a completely different suggestion.

 

Names are only useful for about four gens anyway even if different people own each cb pair (thus wildly different names). If you get much higher than that you're probably doublechecking offsite anyway. I personally hover to read the code and check that over names cause I don't trust my scanning of names.

 

Besides that, just popping in to say I do not support any kind of name wipe, even on dead dragons or burned scrolls. The ability to rename dead dragons I support, but there are lines that depend on the dead dragons having names.

Edited March 21, 2021 by Tini

[MissK.]

3 hours ago, Fuzzbucket said:

I am very much of a "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mind. But if ALL my concerns had been addressed by your suggestion, I would have been fine with it. LOGIC, see

 

It wasn't my suggestion really, not taking any credit, I was just discussing it because it sounded promising. What was not yet addressed then? You only said you weren't wild about it with no further comment, this is what I meant about explaining the reasoning behind our opinions.

 

3 hours ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

One suggestion regarding names on inactive scrolls is don't WIPE them, but allow them to be claimed if someone else tries to claim them. I understand that people can and do return after years of absence... but some don't. I feel 5 years of waiting is a very reasonable compromise. Honestly I'd make it closer to 3 or even 2.

 

Right that sounds familiar, I must have read that in a suggestion before and I still really like it! No reason to wipe names if nobody else wants to claim them anyway.

 

Not sure how I feel about the aliases/secondary names yet, I can see the point but it doesn't quite look appealing to me especially in lineage view right now. If there was a toggle or something to display both or only one or the other it would be great, but I am a little concerned about the likelihood of that since TJ has been against too much customization before (which I personally don't understand but what can we do).

[angelicdragonpuppy]

@MissK.yah it's got a ways to go... but I still see more hope for a win/win there than in anything else so far!

Maybe unnamed dragons with an alias would only show the alias and not the code? Then we could have a dozen (Scorch) or (Drogon)s running around, but of course there'd still be only one with the actual name.

 

Though, the alias will probably have to actually be in [ ] or italics, to differentiate it from codes. I just used ( ) because it already existed in the screenshot for me to manipulate.

[MissK.]

Hmm yeah, maybe some people would want codes displayed for lineages built around that though? And it seems the ability to do some quick inbred checking is somewhat popular too. This is very much personal preference but if the alias wasn't in parentheses it would probably already be more visually appealing to me, italics might be nice. 

[Fuzzbucket]

1 hour ago, MissK. said:

 

It wasn't my suggestion really, not taking any credit, I was just discussing it because it sounded promising. What was not yet addressed then? You only said you weren't wild about it with no further comment, this is what I meant about explaining the reasoning behind our opinions.

 

There seems no point in restating my view over and over, so I just didn't.

I would like exclusivity to remain. mostly because of the /n/ thing. I use it probably dozens of times a day.

 

[GalacticNovie]

I use /n/ a lot too, but I honestly feel like exclusivity is unnecessary and more trouble than it's worth. That's why I suggested making /n/ links into disambiguation pages but nobody commented on that.

Edited March 21, 2021 by Dragonalassa

[HeatherMarie]

7 hours ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

 

Likewise, for those of you who DON'T LIKE unique names, what are some livable middle grounds?

 

6 hours ago, Falorni said:

Freeing up names taken by dead dragons is a massive one for me - even though it doesn't really relate to name exclusivity itself, it'd help free up some names that are currently lost forever!  Making names case sensitive could also help, although I'm not a massive fan in most cases (pun unintended)

 

5 hours ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

One suggestion regarding names on inactive scrolls is don't WIPE them, but allow them to be claimed if someone else tries to claim them. I understand that people can and do return after years of absence... but some don't. I feel 5 years of waiting is a very reasonable compromise. Honestly I'd make it closer to 3 or even 2.

 

As someone who specifically wants to get rid of name exclusivity for *other's* sakes, ie to benefit all those users who had the bad luck to find this game after someone else 'got to the name first', these ideas would be a great step in the right direction imo. Freeing names from dead dragons would allow many names to be used that currently can't be, without negatively affecting other users in any way (since the dragon is dead...). The idea of 'claiming' names on inactive scrolls was something TJ himself spoke of doing at one point but nothing actually came of it, I think it strikes a nice middle ground with allowing active users to use names they want while not just wiping entire scrolls of names. And yes, the 'inactive' timeframe would have to be considerably long, but really once someone has been gone from the site for 5+ years there shouldn't really be an expectation of their account remaining active anyways imo. 

 

I also like the idea (I know it's been mentioned before but not sure where/when) of allowing users to basically 'lock' certain names so no one else can use them, but otherwise doing away with name exclusivity. While I realize the idea probably has it's own issues, I feel like it does address certain issues. Users who have specific names they really care about and see as 'special' and want them to stay unique, they can do that. Users who don't actually care if other dragons have those names can ignore the 'locking' option and allow anyone else to use the names. 

 

Aliases is an interesting idea and could be a compromise I guess, thought it wouldn't be my first choice. It feels a lot more like 'let's keep name exclusivity but give them something tangentially-related to stop them complaining' than a real compromise, to be honest. It feels more like visible-tags than anything else. But if that's all we could possibly get, it's better than nothing. 

[GalacticNovie]

As someone who names a lot of their dragons after references (failing that I just use the name but in a different language), I'm personally in the camp "I dislike exclusivity for others' sake." I have a lot of dragons named after a game that has a lot of meaning to me and I honestly feel guilty sometimes that I'm possibly keeping others from having those names - after all, that game could mean a lot to them too, what makes me so special? If I wanted them to be unique so badly I could just write a description for them; as my 60+ described dragons with only 3 rejections in 10 years prove, it's not that hard. I just find exclusive names redundant as codes are already unique and personalizing your dragons is the exact purpose of descriptions.

 

I should probably make a mockup of my "/n/ disambiguation page" idea when I get home.

Edited March 22, 2021 by Dragonalassa

[Infinis]

I use /n/ all the time - both to find my own dragons and others - and I still don't want exclusivity. Every dragon has a unique identifier already - a code. I suck at remembering codes! I'd still rather not have exclusivity. I can write codes in a simple document or spreadsheet if I need to remember it later. 

 

The inbred argument I feel doesn't quite work because the game doesn't create any negative repercussions around it; individual players do, which puts inbred avoidance - and checking for it - squarely on the individual player, so it isn't unreasonable that there is no "official" onsite inbred checker. But even this can also be solved by displaying both name and code on the lineage page, or showing the code via hovertext when you mouse over it on lineage view (or longpress for mobile; fwiw, right now if you mouseover on a computer and look at the bottom left of your browser window, the full link with code is right there).

 

2 hours ago, MissK. said:

One suggestion regarding names on inactive scrolls is don't WIPE them, but allow them to be claimed if someone else tries to claim them. I understand that people can and do return after years of absence... but some don't. I feel 5 years of waiting is a very reasonable compromise. Honestly I'd make it closer to 3 or even 2.

This was the premise behind name stealing, and the reality is it's still name wiping, but on a smaller, more individual scale. So with this, it's a choice between "a little name wiping" or "rip off the bandaid and just wipe them all."

 

As far as time scale, anything over 1 year is unreasonable to wait to claim names, either with small or large scale name wiping. 5 years is a full third of DC's current existence - that's very unreasonable to make people wait literally half a decade to claim a name! Asking someone to log in one time in a calendar year is a very reasonable request to keep names. If someone can't manage to log in literally once a year for less than a minute, I think it's fair to assume they aren't going to or don't care enough about the names to log in.

 

I don't really like the idea of tags or secondary names. (I feel like tags is probably a separate suggestion, though?) It doesn't seem especially useful when you could just have no exclusivity and then display code + name, with a toggle if you don't want to see the codes.

[GalacticNovie]

Alrighty, this is how I envisioned my /n/ link page idea looking, were this to be approved. Say you decided to look up /n/Rose%20Lumineuse, you'd be taken to this page where any dragon named "Rose Lumineuse" would show up. The dragon who's had that name the longest will show up at the top, while anything else would show up in name date order, with quick links to their lineage/progeny in order to identify which one you're looking for. The oldest one getting top billing (hopefully) would satisfy those who liked their dragon standing out, while the people who rely on /n/ links wouldn't have to worry about functionality being thrown out the window.

 

don't worry i used my own dragons' codes

Edited March 22, 2021 by Dragonalassa

[ShorahNagi]

5 hours ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

This is just my interpretation of the whole aliases / titles thing, so feel free to do your own mockups, but I see it working like this.

 

This is my dragon, Fireblighted. He's the only dragon in the game that is, or can be, called Fireblighted.

 

Now imagine you have your own dragon. Could be named, unnamed, whatever. The point is, he CAN'T be called Fireblighted, right?

 

But if you have ALIASES, you get...

 

You get the idea. Now, if people don't want to see those random names above their chosen "alias," maybe there could be a hide names toggle? It's not ideal, though. I guess it would defer to real names if the dragons in question don't have aliases to display?

I know this concept as affixes (and I shall refer to it as such in this post) - which is actually an elegant solution I didn't think of.

 

With an affix, you could now have longer dragon names [So no longer is a dragon just The Duchess Maria Sophia Gallant but now The Duchess Maria Sophia Gallant (Of Hexen)] or have various Clan names without needing to sacrifice space in the name [No need to name the dragon "Lady Maria of the Shorah Clan" when you can just call her "Lady Maria" (of the Shorah Clan).

 

Lyrical lineages would also benefit :

 

Ba-da-da-dah

(Ba-da-da-dah)

 

I'm Blue

(Da ba dee da ba die)

 

Da ba dee da ba die

(Da ba dee da ba die)

 

This also still allows for an element of exclusivity, especially if affixes are done as names currently are. Sure only one person would ever have Arwen Undómiel (Lady of Rivendell)...but I could have Arwen Undómiel (of the Shorah Clan), someone else could have Arwen Undómiel (Out of Ideas) and so on.

 

I'll admit that affixes could lead to a lineage page appearing cluttered [especially if its messy] but this is already an issue with some current NaMe T R I C K S and patterns.

And it also brings the problem of what if a person doesn't want an affix (but the solution to that is the code becomes the affix [I don't give my dragon Rivenese Bronze an affix, so her view page displays as Rivenese Bronze (Riven)]

 

This, to me at least now that I've given it some thought - is probably the best 'middle ground' between those who want and those who don't want exclusivity on names.

[Tini]

1 hour ago, Dragonalassa said:

Alrighty, this is how I envisioned my /n/ link page idea looking, were this to be approved. Say you decided to look up /n/Rose%20Lumineuse, you'd be taken to this page where any dragon named "Rose Lumineuse" would show up. The dragon who's had that name the longest will show up at the top, while anything else would show up in name date order, with quick links to their lineage/progeny in order to identify which one you're looking for. The oldest one getting top billing (hopefully) would satisfy those who liked their dragon standing out, while the people who rely on /n/ links wouldn't have to worry about functionality being thrown out the window.

 

don't worry i used my own dragons' codes

I adore this mockup so much. I'm not sure we need the named date there, a lot of them would end up being whenever the change happened lol, but I enjoy we can both see lineage and progeny from there. I think a tweak from original to oldest would work because, if the white gets renamed, the saku wouldn't be the 'original' name really.
Unless that was just for the mockup.

Now if only we could have stars next to dragons we own on all pages like this, but that's its own suggestion.

[MissK.]

10 hours ago, Fuzzbucket said:

 

There seems no point in restating my view over and over, so I just didn't.

I would like exclusivity to remain. mostly because of the /n/ thing. I use it probably dozens of times a day.

 

 

Yes, what I mean is that everything you brought up about the /n/ link was addressed in what was already suggested, and you could keep using it basically exactly as you do now. If you are still opposed, it would be more helpful to explain why.

 

7 hours ago, Dragonalassa said:

Alrighty, this is how I envisioned my /n/ link page idea looking, were this to be approved. Say you decided to look up /n/Rose%20Lumineuse, you'd be taken to this page where any dragon named "Rose Lumineuse" would show up. The dragon who's had that name the longest will show up at the top, while anything else would show up in name date order, with quick links to their lineage/progeny in order to identify which one you're looking for. The oldest one getting top billing (hopefully) would satisfy those who liked their dragon standing out, while the people who rely on /n/ links wouldn't have to worry about functionality being thrown out the window.

 

don't worry i used my own dragons' codes

 

This looks good, I like the direct links to lineage and progeny, though not sure if the date is necessary. But I still believe it would be useful to show our own dragons above all other dragons with that name, or at least separate in some capacity, to make them easier to find. 

[Ruby Eyes]

Or, as would be great with ANY kind of list of dragons like this (/progeny/ and /vampire/progeny/, too):

Display the owner's name next to any dragon whose owner gets displayed on its /view/ page, too (no need to create loopholes to find people who don't want to be found).

There's a suggestion thread for something similar to this already (Mark offspring I own), but with your suggested feature quirks here, I think this would be a necessity.

 

Essentially, you can already see owner names when you click every single creature on the progeny page, and you would have the same on an alias or affix listing page.

Just, you know, make it easier to use?

 

Also, what would you suggest for /lineage/ links with /n/? Like this: https://dragcave.net/lineage/n/Purple Pony Point

(Yes, I'm proud of both name and lineage.)

Obviously, I want to link to a lineage when I post that somewhere, not a dis-ambiguation page where people have to guess and click which one I mean.

Edited March 22, 2021 by Ruby Eyes
typo

[Fuzzbucket]

10 hours ago, Infinis said:

As far as time scale, anything over 1 year is unreasonable to wait to claim names, either with small or large scale name wiping. 5 years is a full third of DC's current existence - that's very unreasonable to make people wait literally half a decade to claim a name! Asking someone to log in one time in a calendar year is a very reasonable request to keep names. If someone can't manage to log in literally once a year for less than a minute, I think it's fair to assume they aren't going to or don't care enough about the names to log in.

 

I am OK with stealing single names from inactive scrolls, but a year is too short for a total wipe. I wish I could FIND the player here who came back after considerably more than one year with the most dreadful tale of eviction, power loss and the rest. These things DO happen.

[dragongrrl]

5 hours ago, Fuzzbucket said:

 

I am OK with stealing single names from inactive scrolls, but a year is too short for a total wipe. I wish I could FIND the player here who came back after considerably more than one year with the most dreadful tale of eviction, power loss and the rest. These things DO happen.

I think it was Midas Dorkface's owner. I know that caused a LOT of grief on the site, and the new name owner did not give up the names.

 

The Peppermint Effect was also affected by their owner's absence but several of us managed to retrieve the names.

 

The Fine Magi Line's names have also disappeared and I don't think the owner intended to be gone that long. I have a short segment but I believe she had the direct line to 100 generations.

 

After these events, scroll wipes stopped but there was serious talk of the individual names becoming available after a year. 

 

I was gone between Feb 2016 and Nov 2020, only checking in three or four times during that absence, and was so glad when I could finally return and find my names all in place. If they had been wiped or replaced, it would have been heartbreaking.

[purplehaze]

13 minutes ago, dragongrrl said:

I think it was Midas Dorkface's owner. I know that caused a LOT of grief on the site, and the new name owner did not give up the names.

 

Actually the new owner had swiped the names intending to preserve them for the original dragons, but Ladyfaire chose to rename them instead.

 

 

[dragongrrl]

1 minute ago, purplehaze said:

Actually the new owner had swiped the names intending to preserve them for the original dragons, but Ladyfaire chose to rename them instead.

 

 

Thank you for that correction. My memory does have random misses...

[Pickalope]

While I understand my case is probably not the norm, I left for over 5 years and came back and have been actively playing for quite a few months now. Many of my very old names were wiped back when name wiping was a thing in the first place and I had to rename a lot of my dragons back then. If I had come back to ALL my dragons losing their names all over again, I probably wouldn't have gotten back into it. 

 

So... I personally don't like the idea of any amount of name wiping, HOWEVER, I'm also in the camp of recognizing that my personal experiences aren't important enough to dictate a whole feature if it benefits more people than those that oppose it. So if there are really and truly  not a lot of people like me, then I'd be cool with adapting to whatever the site had in store and making an effort to check in just in case if I ever leave again. The whole site doesn't revolve around me lol

 

However, I do feel like it's worth noting that people can and are put into life situations that prevent them from or make it very difficult to get online and check on their dragons for extended periods of time. (Maybe serving active duty in the military, maybe losing internet access because of a living situation, etc) and one year, even 2-3 years would be too short for those situations.

[Falorni]

I'm still leaning towards wiping/allowing "name steals" from inactive scrolls but agree that 1-2 years doesn't feel like quite enough and 3-5 would probably be more appropriate to allow some leeway for cases where one simply can't really log on for one reason or another.

[Murkydepths]

I do not want any name wiping, but I would not mind if inactive names could be duplicated.  

[wobster109]

I support name swiping from scrolls inactive over a year. The benefit seems to outweigh the harm. The harm is that 1) some of those players will come back and be sad, 2) that some names may disappear from lineages. The benefit is that many names would be available for active users. Many of the inactive users will never return, and the inactive users have a year's opportunity to prevent it, so I think that harm 1 is a reasonable tradeoff.

 

For harm 2, there are two competing desires here, between the lineage preservers and the new namers. It's true that lineages would be harmed, and there's nothing those players could do to prevent it, and that does feel unfair. But I believe that it's consistent with the rest of the site that players don't get too much say over dragons' ancestors. There is no protection against another player renaming or killing a dragon in a lineage, for example. So I think it would be weird to give deference to lineages here, when killing dragons does much worse to a lineage, and is still totally fine.

 

However, I oppose total scroll wiping at any length of inactivity. There's absolutely zero benefit to it, as long as the names can be swiped. It doesn't free up any additional names. All it does is cause a total headache if those players do return. Better that they return and have to rename a handful, than having to rename absolutely everything. I'm on board with impacting inactive players for their desirable names, because someone else can enjoy them. But I'm not on board with removing hundreds or thousands of names that no one else wanted anyway.

Edited March 22, 2021 by wobster109

[Sextonator]

Name wiping wouldn’t be necessary if name exclusivity wasn’t a thing.

[Fuzzbucket]

No, but this is a suggestion aimed at getting some names back into use without losing exclusivity.