rhet0rica Resident
Consider the following user story:
* Annie Avatar sees a product they like in SL worn by Barbie Buffer, or rezzed in world.
* Rather than talk to Barbie, who is a stranger to Annie, she right-clicks on it (as one does) to inspect it (as many viewers allow)
* The "creator" field lists the name of an avatar, Connie Creator.
* ...But Connie didn't create the final product! She only uploaded the mesh.
* Oblivious, Annie contacts Connie, who makes full-perms meshes on the Marketplace, but Connie doesn't remember every single person who ever bought something from her store.
* Annie has no way to find the actual creator, Deborah Detailer.
* Money does not change hands. Somewhere, an economist sheds a single tear.
Alternatively, Connie takes forever to get back to Annie, or Connie is sick and tired of being asked about a commission they made once years ago, or Connie doesn't want their name associated with the product due to a falling out with Deborah over her recent conversion to Anarcho-Primitivism, or whatever.
Problem Summary
For many reasons, it is possible for the "creator" field on an inventory item (or rezzed object) to become unreliable as a primary means of determining where more of that item can be found.
Impact
This may seem like a distant concern to the Lindens, but there are many, many SL profiles that include some variation of the text "please don't contact me with regards to <X>," where <X> is some product that they had some (possibly indirect) hand in producing. Another form of this problem was recently documented on Canny, where someone with a Premium Plus account wanted to upload textures for their alt's store. (They apparently have multiple accounts entirely because each avatar can only have one store on the Marketplace.)
Solution
Therefore I'd like to propose a new column in the inventory, and in the struct for rezzed objects, that serves the purpose of helping strangers identify the origin of the item in question.
Exactly what format it should have, I'm not sure. It could be:
* A freeform textfield
* A marketplace store number/link
* The UUID of the "final" creator
* The UUID of an image
* The UUID of the creator's group
* A landmark or SLURL
Probably the creator UUID or marketplace link would be most resilient to the shifting sands of SL. The MP link would be particularly valuable if SL ever implements multiple stores per avatar.
Mutability: Ideally this would either be permanent once set, or adjustable so long as the object is full permissions. Or, I suppose, it really could just be adjustable with the 'modify' permission like other metadata.