Self-governed communities

Yes, I think player run communities in SL would be very nice contribution

I have friends who try make this happen already. But we need some technical support. There are very crucial features missing which currently limit what can be done. I have been running player community in Shadowbane since 2000 www.braialla.com and before that in Asheron's Call eg.dereth.ac, but currently, if I wanted to, I could not easily do same thing in Second Life because tools are missing.

Here my wish list:

GROUP MANAGEMENT

o More group ranks. Only "officer" and "member" is too limiting.
o An option that allows to turn off the group dividend feature
o Instead, we need some kinda L$ account for the group and the ability to use group money for purchases, to withdraw group money and to deposit group money
o Group inventory
o A ban list
o A friends list
o The ability to assign one or two established community members as mentors to a newbie
o Permissions that can be assigned to each group rank including:
- Can invite members to group YES/NO
- Can promote/demote members up to rank X
- Can ban members up to rank X
- Can start recall elections for people up to rank X
- Can vote on recalls for people up to rank X
- Can start a survey YES/NO
- Can vote in surveys YES/NO
- Can perform financial transactions YES/NO
- Can list group inventory YES/NO
- Can add to group inventory YES/NO
- Can copy from group inventory YES/NO
- Can take from group inventory YES/NO
- Can edit/delete in group inventory YES/NO
- Can sell group land YES/NO
- Can rent group land YES/NO
- Can edit group land YES/NO
- Can edit group objects YES/NO
- Can add to ban/friends lists YES/NO
- Can remove from ban/friends lists YES/NO
- etc.

The current system with only two ranks and the ability of recall elections is problematic. It can be abused easily and lead to constant internal strive. Any group of people with enough accounts could join an established community, then take it over through recall elections.

COMMUNICATION

o We need group chat channel that you actively tune in and that is not mixed with IMs. Like separate window you can show and hide.
o No matter when you log in, you should be able to view history of group communication of the past hour
o Message of the day feature
o Group announcements feature


LAND RENTING FEATURE
It should be possible to set a parcel of land for rent to another person. That way a community can maintain control of an area while still allowing people to enjoy their own home. This should also be possible on island sims. Settings for this would include:
- Rental fee
- Payment weekly/monthly
- Allow/disallow terraforming
- Allow/disallow tenant to remove objects from land owner

The last option is necessary for renting out parcels that already contain a house or structure. Otherwise, when the tenant cleans up the parcel the very house he rented will be destroyed.

An alternative/addition to this would be a feature that restricts reselling of land to members of a specific group.

LAND MANGEMENT FEATURES
o A friends list to add individuals and groups to a parcel
o A window that lists each of your friends and an entry "Others". You can select each entry and click a button for:
- RETURN objects of this user/group
- DELETE objects of this user/group
- SET PRIM LIMIT, which brings one popup where you can enter a prim limit for that individual/group
- A button to activate/deactivate the ban list of this user or group
- A button to activate/deactivate the friends list of this user or group
- More buttons for other permission settings
o A feature to copy permissions and settings from one parcel to another, including friends lists.

If you give players and groups tool to maintain ban/friends lists, and allow people to activate those lists on their land, then griefers will have hard time. In Shadowbane it only took one mouseclick to ban a player from your whole nation. Not only this, but you could ban all players of a certain guild or of a whole nation

OTHER THINGS
o Banning should not only apply to one account, but all accounts on same credit card
o In group elections it should be one vote per credit card, not one vote per account
o It should appear in a person's public profile which players and groups banned that player and who put that player on friends list.
o An addition to the objects permission system that allows the permission "resell/give away" to be restricted to members of a group. This would mean that certain objects could only be distributed within the group

Mmmm, ok. Maybe this list looks long and is much work for Linden Lab programmer. I am also sure it is not complete. I hope more people have more nice suggestions

Some interesting ideas.

I'm still new enough that I probably don't fully understand the full worldwide effect of permissions setting available to individual land-owners, but I'd like to see the ability to set the land permissions specifically to different Group members, People on calling card list, and individuals, and to define the permission setting in each case to allow for exceptions.....example:

Anyone can come onto my land, but not generally have pemission to build. People who have my caling card may build, but not use scripts, but I allow exceptions for say, 3 people on my list who I really like, they can use scripts too. Group A members may build, but no scripts at all. Group B members may do ANYTHING they want on my land, limited only by their group rank (more on this below). I can also define my "ban list" more specifically, so that by default, I can make sure that people on my "ban" list aren't allowed on my parcel, and ALSO can't build or run scripts. Or, maybe, that I can "ban" them by still allowing them on the parcel, but disallowing any scripts or building.

Essentially this means being able to set the permissions for any individual with regards to your land at any time....but in order to make it convenient, to be able to pre-define certain classes of permissions, and "blanket" assign them to likely clusters of people.....people on my calling card list, members of MULTIPLE groups that I'm associated with(Group A may do this, Group B may do that), and assign the groups differently.....and STILL, be able to navigate down to the individual person, to override their default permissions and give them more, or less permissions than the group. Any time you override a person's individual permissions, the override takes precedence over all of their group profiles for your land, until such time as you "deactivate" the override for them. This would prevent, for example, an individual being able to "bypass" my override on them, merely by changing their active group, and "re-setting" their permissions. (A person is members of 2 different groups, both of which have pemissions profiles for that parcel) An individual must activate their group membership, if they want to take advantage of that group's permissions on a particular parcel of land. Calling-card members are activated by default, and their permission profile changes if they have a group active while on the parcel.

This is important, especially for groups: a group's permissions with regard to a particular parcel of land should be set as a 2-part profile......what the Landowner is willing to let the group do, and what the group is willing to let its members do. For example, a landowner may wish to deed land to a group, or create a permission profle for that group on their land. They may wish to make the land fit in with the group's structure as much as possible, in which case they can give total permissions to the group....but only those members of the group with the appropriate rank can actually take advantage of those permissions. (I approve of Anshe's idea of allowing group creators to define different rank structures and permisions to accommodate their particular needs). This will allow a landowner, if they want, to create a pemission profile for their land allowing it to Behave like group land, without actually deeding it to the group. They can allow groups that they are sympathetic to to have customized profiles, to use their land as a workshop, play area, etc, and allow the group to define these rights more specifically to its members. Also, a landowner can make their pemissions lower than the group's settings, if that is what they want. Like with permissions on objects and scripts, Land pemissions should allow for the possibility for differences....A person's current permissions will be determined by the lowest permission setting (in each field) granted by the landowner to their currently-active group, and their group's permission to them according to rank.

Landowners should also have an option to "add all members of this group to ban list"....the permissions profiles will "dump" to the landowner's default ban settings, and can be edited later at leisure.

The idea of showing who has banned a person in their profile will be a contentious one, but it does have merit. Why use a negative rating system at all, if it does not affect the person's experience really, and when others cannot tell why, when or by whom they have been neg-rated? Showing a person's bans would show definite consequenses for their actions, and allow other players the chance to "follow up" and investigate on their own why they were banned....even ask the person themself. This can affect whether one player might wish to deal with another.....Perhaps the ban was just from a nasty neighbor....perhaps the person misbehaved, too badly too often at a club.

<edit> I don't know if LSL allows this, but if not, it should have functions that allow interacting with land permissions, but which do not allow users to "script" their way past a landowner's permissions......For example, a landowner rents or lends their property out for an event. Participants show up and click on a box that assigns them a profile of permissions for that night. Troublemakers have their pemissions taken away, and possibly get kicked/banned from the parcel if the owner/event host chooses.

COMMUNICATION

o We need group chat channel that you actively tune in and that is not mixed with IMs. Like separate window you can show and hide.
o No matter when you log in, you should be able to view history of group communication of the past hour
o Message of the day feature
o Group announcements feature


Yes! Yes! Yes!

Excellent!

Thank you Anshe for posting your ideas!

Please do your best to be sure LL sees this, as I know they are still interested in comments about SL Groups.