group suggestion for 1.7

If anyone has played Horizons (a MMORPG) you might know that guilds have ranks and privilages you can add and remove from. I own a guild there and have it set with 4 ranks. Each rank allows different permissions to there users that I specified.

Leader: Full guild Privilages.
Officer: full event editing. add/remove users and change there ranks.
Member: able to add new users and add events.
Applicant: A trial user with no privilages. Best behavier = Promotion to member.

I think groups In SL might be more beneficial set up this way. Of course we will need to change some things to make It more suitable. Posibly put them Into Sub Ranks within the officer and member ranks.

My setup would be like this...
Officer
-Leader: Full permissions on group and land
-Officer: Full group permissions except land control
Member
-Member: Add Applicants, miner event editing
-Applicant: No permissions, trial member

(It might require renaming of the officer and member ranks. you can add and remove sub ranks. sub ranks will share the same rank title overhead (to avoid confusion). After the patch, group will still be the same as they are now, untill an officer adds a sub rank)

Reason for suggestion: It would set order within a group to allow only high ranks to edit the land and group options. It would prevent land thieft and griefers that join the group just to recall an officer and leave. It would also be good for a business group that has employees and customers. the employer can have there own rank too.

Groups definately need some work by LL. If and when they are reworked, I hope LL gives some consideration to the different ways groups are used.

I posted to the hotline on this issue a couple months ago - details here:

/invalid_link.html

Group tools definitely need to be reworked. This has been stated over and over in different ways. The Lindens are working on it. But players need to collect all these suggestions and really work through the pros and cons. Because sometimes a few clamouring demanding types get the ear of the Lindens, and the Lindens make a change to the software thinking they are satisfying "the community". Then later, when it comes out, one high-profile content-provider might crow and warble about how much he likes the changes (which he helped induced) but then everybody else groans with the horrid inconveniences and crashes.

Group functions are too important to keep borking up. There used to be the idea that groups were just clubs, and that maybe there should be club groups for just fun and games, and land groups to manage land. But it's too hard to keep different types of group functions in the game, so you need to have one set of flexible tools.

The role-playing guild functions you suggest drawn from other games give me the willies. They are more of that same hierarchical, tyrannical medieval game culture that already spreads like a virus on the Internet. But we want SL to be a free and liberal metaverse world, a flexible host, with possibilities for games, but also for serious endeavours whether commerce or governance or education.

What you're suggesting could create scores of mini fiefdoms with one person keeping others helplessly in thrall until they make payoffs like bonded labor immigrants. That's if it is put to ill use by just a lot of stupid kids making dumb mafias with the emphasis on macho culture, force, power over other players, and intelligence-gathering and griefing.

On the other hand, what you're suggesting, if tied to LAND groups, could be helpful in trying to prevent the malicious use of the group tools to steal land or untier land and subject it to Linden seizure. So I've thought about having these functions, gradated:

1. Investment Officer -- pays the upfront purchase price of the land and applies to the tier to it so should be the only one who can set land for sale (there might be more than one with this status. Can operate all levers of control on the parcel.
2. Management Officer -- maybe pays tier, or provides building or labour, but cannot set a land to sale, yet has the right to deed objects, return objects, set objects, set autoreturn, etc. Can set URLs and name lots and click off entry in "find places", can set to home.
3. Management Member -- can set out objects, set URLs for music and video, set to home.
4. Member -- can set their objects to the group so they won't return from the land. Can set the parcel to home.
5. Trial Member -- Has no privileges except drawing from the group dwell, set to home.

I don't at all want to set this in stone until I've seen groups of knowledgeable people work this up and down and back and front to see if changes will make it worse. It's already quite broken and pernicious. I want to make sure changes to it don't worse it.

Speaking from experience, it's ironic how that same "mini fiefdom" mentality did permeate several Horizons guilds before I quit. This is not about other games, though.

The fact the group tools could use a rework is pretty obvious. How that rework should be done, however, is a far more difficult issue.

I think the way to go is typically through delegation - the allowance of group leaders to delegate powers out through a flexible system. As for other implications, like recall elections, changes are also needed there to make the system more flexible and less bearaucratic.

Nice reminds me of how anarchy online organizations are setup. I'm a bureaucrat in AO

I'm not trying to make SL more like other games. I just think groups need a revamp within the management structure. I was using Horizons Structure as an example. I Like random's ideas. Allowing each rank access to different sections of the land options. I do believe trial members with no privilages till they become members is a great way to minimize the amount of those anoying recall elections. Sometimes there done by newbies who are just curius of what the button does, but other times its on purpose to anoy people.

It wasnt just guild structure that made people give up on horizons. it was also the lack of content lol. Its hard to find something to kill after you leave the startup isles unless your not even looking for them. Nothing in sight till you fill your cargo disk of ore, then the golems pop up. XD