Password invitations to groups

This is an idea come from the thread on implementing script based group invites, but is a much simpler idea that can get around some of the problems that script invites would solve.

Quite simply, this would be an option to password protect group sign-ups. So for an open-enrollment group (anyone can join, no sign-up fee) you can set a password, this way users must know the password before they are able to join the group. So while anyone can attempt to join at any time, they must know the password to do so.
I suppose that this could be an option for any group allowing anyone to join, even if there is a price associated with it, ie if you know the password then you can pay the joining fee.

This would be extremely useful for managing rental land, as you can simply have a scripted rent box give the tenant the group password when they make their first payment. They can then join the group immediately and start placing stuff on the land. The land can thus be configured to auto-return non-group owned objects, and deny users from rezzing objects that are not in the group, protecting it from people littering objects, or in some cases (okay, my case for my sim idea) allow you to enable auto-return sim-wide, and still run rentals to help cover costs.
The main advantage to this over manually adding users to a closed group, is that they can add themselves immediately, instead of having to wait for you to do it before they can rez anything in their new apartment/plot of land. Once they cease renting you can then have a delay before it becomes available again so that the group can be cleared of users and the password changed.

It still isn't as instant as a script controlled invite system would be, however this one would definitely be much easier to implement (basically one extra piece of info and one or two lines of code!)

Useful. Not as useful as scripted group invites/ejects, but still very useful.
The password could be hidden in the group's "about" or "rules" infocards on their land - to make sure that people understand how the group works before they can join it.

Another note would perhaps be that only the group owner, or user's whose role allows it, would be able to see what a group's password is (so they can hand it out), this could perhaps be rolled into the invite ability though.
However, it would be nice to have the ability to view the password, and the ability to change it kept separate, for example again in a land rental system (since the system would need to be given the new password to hand out), or as you say in notecards, since these would require updating too. So you might not want your group officers doing this as they please.

I like this idea, very much. Though it's not as big a deal now that you can delegate invites to group members: you can create a "gatekeeper" role (with the title "Zuul" ) and make sure there's enough gatekeepers so there's usually one online at any time.

For land rental, yes, that's a great idea.