New Groups In Preview 1.12

I just wanna say.... THANK YOU!

The new group functions (and 25 limit) in the new preview are FANTASTIC. When do we go live?

So for those of us stuck and work who can't see, what ARE the new features?

Defaults to having Everyone, Officer and Owner rolls. You can make new ones or change all but the Owner role. Each role can have it's own title, and for kicks you can switch between active titles if you belong to more than one role. Let me make a list of the actual role features...

Checkboxes for each role:

Membership:
[] Invite Members
[] Eject Members
[] Toggle 'open enrollment'

Roles:
[] Create Roles
[] Delete Roles
[] Change Role names/titles/descriptions
[] View roles and allowed actions
[] Assign members to roles
[] Remove members from roles
[] Assign actions to roles

Group Identitiy:
[] Change group charter/insignia/published status.

Parcel Management:
[] Deed land and buy land for group
[] Abandon land to the governor
[] Set land for sale info
[] Subdivide and join land
[] View group-owned land

Parcel Identity:
[] Toggle 'show in find places'
[] Change parcel name/description
[] Set landing point/teleport options

Parcel Settings:
[] Change music/media settings.
[] Toggle 'edit land'
[] Toggle various About Land->Options

Parcel Powers:
[] Bypass 'Edit Land' restriction
[] Bypass 'Fly' Restriction
[] Bypass 'Create Objects' restriction
[] Bypass 'Create Landmark' restriction
[] Bypass 'Run SCripts' restriction
[] Allow 'set home to here'

Parcel Access:
[] Manage parcel access list
[] Manage parcel ban list
[] Change 'sell passes' settings
[] Allow eject/freeze.

Parcel Content:
[] Return any and all objects
[] Return non-group owned objects
[] Landscaping using linden plants

Object Management:
[] Deed objects to group
[] Manipulate (move, copy, modify)
[] Set group-owned objects for sale

Accounting:
[] Pay group liabilities
-- I believe this is 'pay group liabilities and receive share of group funds' or something to that effect, but it's cut off after 'receive...' and there doesn't seem to be a way to resize the window.
[] View group L$

Notices:
[] Send notices
[] Receive notices and view past notices.

Proposals:
[] Create new proposals
[] Vote on proposals
[] View proposal and voting history

Oh, you can also toggle whether the members of each role are visible or not, instead of just hiding the whole member list. That could be fun.

I hope this stays in preview a long time and that participation in the preview grid testing increases by at least an order of magnitude.

This looks like it needs extremely thorough testing before being released to the main grid.

I will be interested to read what Prokofy Neva has to say about the change. Prokofy worked hard promoting an improved system for groups that this reminds me of somewhat.

I hope it doesn't stay in preview TOO long.

Preview 1.11 is less exciting so far. The 'UI improvements' appear to be tear-off menus (taking an excerpt from the UNIX world it seems) where you can 'sticky' one of the menus at the top so that it becomes a seperate window and stays open until you close it. Of questionable value in SL, but hey.

There's also a Take Off Clothing > submenu now where you can take off clothing without hunting in your inventory, I've wished for that a few times when changing outfits.

I'm probably missing something else.

Thank you for posting this. These new features will be terrific. I'm not too concerned about it needing a lot of testing in preview beyond the normal amount as long as the defaults are set to mimic the way groups currently work - i.e. the roles are defined to function the way they do now and initially only the owner can modify the roles.

That is the defaults, yes. I think Sue's concern is that with all the under-the-hood changes that had to be done to implement this, there's always the possibility that someone may accidentally (or maliciously) perform a role that they're not supposed to be able to. Very thorough testing that all the roles actually restrict correctly is very important.

We will get more than 15 groups? Wonderful!

As for the rest of it, as usual I have no idea what it's talking about, and won't till I actually lay hands on it in practice. (And probably won't understand it then, anymore than I understand buying and selling land. for groups, and not groups, and deeding, and joining, and what not.)

I do know, though, that I love your forum avatar, Karsten! I'm not sure what it IS, but I love it anyway!

coco

Yep, we get 25 groups!

Also, my forum avatar is plush badger I sent a friend of mine and it's snuffling the camera lense.

That kind of testing falls under "normal amount" for me, because of the nightmare potential of, for example, an unauthorized person selling off land.

I'm not sure exactly how much under the hood work was needed for this. I've written software for a couple decades, so I know better than to assume too much about someone else's code, but almost all of that underlying functionality was already there in one form or another. Officers of a group already bypass the "Edit Land" flag, for example. The part that appears to be brand new is the creation, assignment, etc. of roles, and the fact that roles have been expanded from a binary flag (officer, member) to an unspecified maximum number of roles.

May be missing something here, but Take Off -> Clothing thing has been in the client since 1.10 at least if not earlier... it appears as option when you right-click on yourself? ^^;

Everything on that group feature list looks like it was drawn up specifically for the benefit of AnsheChung.com. Will the covenants include any provisions for deposing dictators?

Has it? I always just thought attachments was, but I haven't paid any attention to it in the last release. In any case it's in the edit menu under detaching attachments now.

This is to the benefit of everyone. Any group that owns land will benefit GREATLY from this, whether they own the land for commercial reasons or for community reasons or whatever. This is a HUGE step forward for everyone.

I'm not sure I agree. Once again most of the land features are limited to Estate Owners. There needs to be some provision for a bottom-up approach. There also needs to be a provision for throwing out officers and owners who prove themselves jerks.

Also there needs to be a way to remove overly restrictive covenants.

Just to keep nagging on this, when an Estate Owner "sells" off more than 50% of an island, shouldn't they cease to be the controlling owner? In a publicly traded corporation, they would no longer have a controlling vote.

Has anyone seen whether these group/land features apply to single-ownership land or just group-deeded land? Despite being a champion of such features in the early days, I've since reversed my opinion and have concluded that single-ownership is best in most cases.

What I mean is, is it possible for a single-ownership parcel to designate limited powers to a group, such as security or janitorial functions?

wow! this is great!

Covenents are sort of a whole different thing. I'm more focused on the ability for land management groups to designate authority to members on a more flexible and selective basis. I've not played with the covenents at all, so I'm not sure what all they enable or don't.

Ultimately I'm sure the owner always retains full control. On a private island the renters aren't going to be able to vote the owner off, that's just ridiculous.

New snapshot window in 1.11.0:
(the $10L charge for postcards is a confirmed bug)

SHINY!

Has anyone figured out what covenants do?

Do you have to already own land in the preview grid to test it out?

Do they have any land for sale?

What if you don't have any money in the preview grid?

wow! New group stuff looks awesome!!!!

New snapshot options looks great too!

-Ghoti

Don't know when it was added but definitely it's there right now. I've been using it quite a bit to take off single pieces of clothing without having to reconfigure a new outfit set or hunt in inventory.