Should artist "other names" not contain their group name?

This is pretty minor, but it came up as I was running a script for adding Weibo /n/<name> names to the artist "other names" field. In artist #209855, it added 7th_knights, but @NekoAria 's bot removed it, I assume because it was already the group name value (it was added back twice because I re-ran it a few times, unaware of this conflict).

Seemingly this doesn't matter for searches as that field gets included anyway, but I was wondering if there was an official(-ish) stance on this. I would've expected it to be blocked by site logic if it were a bad thing, just like trying to add the artist entry's name to the other names list is a no-op.

I don't think it makes much sense to have a "group" name where there is only one artist to begin with, honestly. The whole group system feels legacy. In cases where it's legitimately a group I don't think it would make a ton of sense to be in other names, but in this case it doesn't seem like there should be a group name there at all.

Yeah, I've added logic to my bot to remove entries from "other names" if they duplicate the "group name" value. I think this is the right call — especially from a searchability standpoint, redundant strings in "other names" serve no real purpose.

As for single-member groups: I think it makes more sense to keep their group name in the dedicated "group name" field rather than having it buried in "other names." The group name field gives you a quick, clear way to identify an artist's doujin circle affiliation at a glance, and there are quite a few such cases.

On a related note — while digging through Danbooru's source code, I came across a hidden search parameter: "group_name_present". You can use it to list all artists that have a group name set, via "https://danbooru.donmai.us/artists?search[group_name_present]=true".

One more thing: I feel like the current design of "group name" as a single string, rather than an array like "other names", is a limitation worth addressing. An artist can realistically belong to multiple doujin circles, so a single-value field doesn't really cover that.