What happens if I deed land to Group? (urgent question)

FIRST THE BASIC QUESTION (urgency below):

I have my own sim (private island). The entire sim is one land for my shop. I have a Group for my shop, to inform my customers, but the land is not set or deeded to Group. I am the land owner.

I've disabled 'create objects' for the entire sim/land. In the Group I've given my Group Officer permission to rezz prims (and other permissions). That doesn't work because, as I understand, the land should be set and deeded to Group for the Group permissions to work, right?

But what exactly happens when I deed the land to Group? Should all my shop products on that land also be deeded to Group or else they will automatically be deleted from the land? That would be a disaster! And is it okay if I give Group members only the standard permissions, so they can't do anything else with my land? Sorry, I am two years in SL but just recently started a group.

REASON FOR URGENCY:

The basic question above is for me to understand how deeding to Group affects land permissions (and if all shop products would be deleted). The direct reason is that I want to have a music concert at my sim within a few days. For that I need to allow the concert management to rezz prims, run scripts etcetera. So I made a specific role in my regular Group with specific Group abilities for them. But that doesn't work, since the land is not deeded to Group.

What is the best way to do this? I am very afraid that deeding land to Group will make my entire shop and products disappear with one button click, because none of my objects on the sim is set or deeded to a Group.

Please help me out here. Thank you very much!

Just make sure you turn off... AUTORETURN other resident's objects in the Objects Tab of the About Land controls before you Deed the Parcel to the Group... then go around and SET all of your objects to that group before you turn it back on. You DO NOT need to DEED your objects to the group... they only need to be SET to group in the Item Properties.

Also.. make sure you double check all the abilities are what you intend for every Role in your Group. There are some default settings for the Everyone role that you'll probably want to take off. Also... dont make any one else an Owner of your group. You can never remove another owner.

Ah Claari, thanks for your quick reply. Oh wow, I really have a LOT of prims on my sim. It's almost impossible to set properties on each individual item within just a few days. And I'll probably forget some.

For this concert the concert management needs mainly rezz and script permissions. Wouldn't it be better if I just allow build and script usage for the entire sim? Just for that concert night?

Or:

Should I, like you said, first turn off AUTORETURN, but leave all my prims as they are now? So not even SET them to Group. They wouldn't disappear then, right? Then deed the land to Group and check roles?

After the concert I could 'undeed' the land again and turn on AUTORETURN again, to make my sim/shop as it was before? And wouldn't that hurt my traffic numbers or other things that are important for my search listings?

My shop is on property owned by my group and all my merchandise and buildings etc. are not set to group - so far I have never gotten in the mood to go around setting them all. So I definitely have auto return off. I just have permission to rez objects set for group members only, which seems to work fine for me. There's no reason for anyone else to rez things there.

Autoreturn can be used in one of three conditions:

A: Parcel is owned by an individual, and all prims on the parcel are also owned by that individual. Only the parcel owner can leave prims there if Autoreturn is on, all others will get returned.

B: Parcel is owned by an individual. Parcel is SET to a group, and all prims on the parcel not owned by the parcel owner are also SET to that group. Both the parcel owner and group members can leave prims there if Autoreturn is on, all others will get returned. Group members need to have their group tag on to leave items there.

C: Parcel is DEEDED to a group, and therefore owned by that group. All prims on the parcel are also SET to that group. Any group members with appropriate role permissions can leave prims there if Autoreturn is on, all others will get returned. Group members need to have their group tag on to leave items there.

Only in case C will you be able to use other group role functions to override general case restrictions, such as allowing create objects only for group officers, when that ability is turned off for the general public and for group members in general.

Either case B or case C can allow group members to leave prims there, while disallowing others, IF you set the parcel appropriately. You can allow create objects for the group while disallowing it for all not in the group. On the Options tab, there are seperate check boxes for "All Residents" and "group".

Paulo, this is your simplest option. Allow rezz and script permissions just for the concert, then turn them back off. Of course... this would also allow griefers to rezz and run scripts so be prepared to do security.

And you are also correct about Deeding to the Group, then selling it back to yourself after the concert... if I remember correctly... your traffic numbers would reset... your parcel would receive a new ID and if you had made any gains in the New Search.. you would drop back down again. Sorry if that's not entirely correct.. I've not had coffee this morning. But it's a bad thing trust me.

How about this? Just cut out a parcel big enough for the concert and deed that to your Group. They shouldn't need to rezz all over your SIM. Then later you can add that parcel back to the entire... the new parcel would retain the traffic of the largest parcel after a join.

I dont know how this worksat all but be carefull , I did once and half of the island I had build was returned to my inventory and I could just scream at myself for hving doneit without a testing into a small parcell....

I made a group with my functionary robot alt 'group sitter' and I left auto-return on by mistake and my home vanished a minute later. You need to be very careful fiddling with group land settings.

Perhaps it would be better to just SET the land to your group, or possibly divide the island into separate parcels and experiment - DEED one parcel to the group, one where little or no damage can be done!

Sorry, I just realised I'm saying what's just been said above. But if you see it twice, it makes more of an impact

Dear, dear people. I want to thank you all (especially Claari) for your help. Oh boy, that was a close one!! I was just ONE mouse click away from deeding almost my entire sim to Group. Autoreturn was on. I really would have died if all my hard work would have vanished in an instance.

Claari, I am going to choose the simplest option, like you suggest: just allowing build and script usage. The music stream I'll just copy and paste in the media window. I will be there myself during the concert, so I should be able to answer any griefing attempt immediately.

Oh man, I thought I knew almost anything in SL after two years. In the meantime I've spoken to others who were not so lucky as I was and, just like Naiman and Conifer in this thread, saw their entire builds disappear. That's one of the biggest disasters that can happen in SL I think. I hardly didn't sleep tonight, thinking about this doom scenario.

Thank god for these forums. It's only because I remembered a fraction of info about deeding and disappearing objects that made me not go through with it yesterday.

THANK YOU ALL!!!

There really do seem to be some possible pitfalls alright. Every time I'm in that window with the "Abandon Land" button I think what if I accidentally clicked on that...