Changing Default Search by CreatorName on Avatar Marketplace

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#1

Hi Creators,

As some of you may be aware, searching for items by creator name has issues on the avatar marketplace. When you search for items made by a certain creator using their creator name, if there is a user and a group who go by the same name, the user’s creations will always get shown. There is no way to specify what CreatorType you are looking for. The only workaround on the web is to append &CreatorType=Group in your url.

For example, if you are trying to search by creatorName adidas on web marketplace:
https://www.roblox.com/catalog?Category=1&CreatorName=adidas&salesTypeFilter=1

In the past, that would only show you creations from the user adidas, this is how you would specify that you want to see creations from the group adidas:
https://www.roblox.com/catalog?Category=1&CreatorName=adidas&CreatorType=Group&salesTypeFilter=1

This has caused frustration among the community when a search by creator name works for a group for a long time until a user gets created with that same name and all of a sudden the same url turns up a page of empty results.

The Solution

When creatorName is specified and creatorType is not specified, catalog-api will return creations from both user and group if both exist, or from either one if the other does not exist. Note that there will be no UI changes to marketplace web and the universal app, meaning there is still no way for users to specify search by creatorType via the user interface. The way to distinguish between a creation from user and group visually in the results is there is a ‘@’ prefix in front of username but no such prefix for group name.


Creation from “adidas” user on left vs “adidas” group on right

In order to support these changes,some changes on catalog-api are necessary. We will introduce a new creatorType enum 0 = All which will be the default creatorType if not specified in the url.

In order to allow our developers who use AvatarEditorService::SearchCatalog to specify what CreatorType they are looking for, we have included support for the CatalogSearchParams.CreatorType and Catalog.SearchParams.CreatorId parameters in AvatarEditorService. More detailed documentation can be found here.

We understand that this change may adversely affect users who add links to marketplace in the description of their items without specifying creatorType as creations from groups of the same name will start showing up in those links. Please take note that going forward, if that is unacceptable to you, you will have to specify the CreatorType in your link, otherwise, creations from both user and group will appear interleaved according to our internal ranking function.

If you are concerned about impersonation of a popular UGC creator by creating a group with the same name, there are clear Roblox community standards and guidelines against impersonating individuals, groups and entities in ways that may harm their reputation. A group sharing the same name as a user alone is not enough grounds for this violation. You would need to prove that this group is intentionally impersonating you by maybe using your logo or likeness in marketing their creations, hence misleading users to think their creations are made by the impersonatee. If you would like to report a group who you think is impersonating you, file an abuse report under the “Bullying, harassment, discrimination” category.

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns!

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#2

This topic was automatically opened after 10 minutes.

#3

This is a nice update, and I think this is a very good idea (I hated how this wasn’t a default. Would be nice to see options to choose if we wanna search by group or user in the menu too!)
However now that impersonation is worse than ever, I have an idea proposal.

Allow users to get a group with their username as soon as an account is created, or only allow the certain user to take their username as a community/group.

For example, a new user called “idelww2” would either get a free default community called “idelww2” OR would be the only user allowed to take the name “idelww2” for a community.

Another good idea would be disallowing invisible characters from group names, such as " ᅠ" (you can’t see the character, but it is different than the ‘space’)

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#4

While this is a great feature, what protections are there for developers that already have their username claimed by a group? If a group with the same username as the creator decides to upload UGC, those UGC items will be permanently associated with the developer. While you mentioned that Roblox will only act if the group impersonates the user, this does not stop the creator’s page from being permanently attributed to another group’s items, in the case of said group uploading items.

While there are some usernames that are protected, to avoid other users from impersonating them, I am quite surprised to see that the same treatment is not applied to group names.

12 Likes
#5

heh the skeleton and the fit is referencing sans

8 Likes
#6

Besides the user handle like " @adidas " … all users also have a unique user number.

Why can’t this be coupled with the handle when searched, so that when there are similar names… (even shorter or longer versions) that “adidas” would fit in… then there should be a selector that the person can also search via the users ID# … that they can filter/choose from the few options presented.

Once they use the users ID# … there is no way to get other peoples products anymore.
It should be a simple fix - unless I missed something.

1 Like
#7

There is a strong need for a UI menu to change the filtering type. If this only involves changing the URL and refreshing the page afterward when a button is pressed, it should be a straightforward feature to implement, and it would definitely help many users who don’t want to inspect the link.

Nevertheless, it’s not always possible to explicitly reserve a username for a specific user within their own group, because sometimes users may want their group name to include a prefix or suffix, such as “Club XYZ” or “Group XYZ”, or even use a pun like “Rolling Scones” or “Weeknd Warrior”. Therefore, modifying what is displayed is certainly the better alternative.