Is it possible to display prefix and suffix in the profile headline?

Question

First, I'm finding the allotted prefix space too small. In recent work on Canadian Prime Ministers I'm finding that I can't fit in the proper title in the space provided. Canadian Prime Ministers are properly referred to as the "Right Honorable" which is abbreviated "Rt. Hon." but several PMs have been knighted so the title gets expanded to: "Rt. Hon. Sir" which won't fit.

Second, I believe it would be nice to display prefix and suffix in the profile headline. This would also help when looking for matches

Comments

You mean "Right Honourable". :D (Defending Canadian spelling to my dying breath! Haha.)

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Hear! Hear! Lianne, not just Canadian spelling though, Australian and English and NZ and .....

Answer 1

This has recently been discussed elsewhere. I don't perceive willingness to change the way prefixes appear (or not) in the header.  But perhaps there's willingness to expand bot prefix and suffix fields.  I run up against that limit often.  

Answer 2

Hi Eugene,

Expanding the prefix beyond 10 characters sounds like a good idea, but it would be a significant change. We'd have to take the entire database offline and rebuild it.

As for using it in the headline, this is up for discussion. Some disadvantages:

* Everyone who presumed it wouldn't be so prominent before would now find that it is. For example, I have "Mr." as my prefix, but I'd rather not see Mr. Chris Whitten as the headline of my profile.

* This will hurt "cousin bait" SEO. If someone is searching for Stephen Harper they're probably using "Stephen Harper" as the keywords. The headline is important for this matching. If we put "Right Honorouble Stephen Harper" in the headline it's less likely to be found in a search for "Stephen Harper."

As for it helping when looking for matches, what do you mean?

Comments

I was thinking if I did a search for John Smith I would get hundreds of potential matches but if I was able to see the ones that some were Rev. John Smith and John Smith Sr. and so on it would help me to match to the correct profile.