Any hints and tips on forming a group?

I'm going to start up a group to let me pool my land between my 2 login accounts. I've read all the official information...If anyone has any "hints and tips" that are not published that might keep me from making really stupid, irreversable mistakes I would really appreciate them. Thanks. J.

PS - Lindal, I think I remember that firehose of information you shot at me the other day. Is it in writing anywhere? Thx.

Enroll an alt right after you create the group. That way the group won't be deleted after 48 hrs, since it must have at least 2 members at all times.
Be very careful who you designate a group "owner". That title cannot be removed, you can't remove an owner from the group. This is only possible voluntarily.

I'll be the owner and my other live login (SJackb Northman) will be the other member. We in theory will both have full buy/sell rights to all the properties. I'm assuming then we can both (or either) set the attributes of the properties. What other roles are important in reality? Any good written tutorials other than the knowledge base articles? Thx. J.

Take a look at all the tabs and stuff in the Group Info box for any of your current groups. That will teach you a lot.

In short:

1. Create new group. Give it a name (think carefully, it can't be changed later). Pay the L$100 fee.
2. Send an invitation to your alt.
3. Log in as your alt and accept the invitation.

That's all you need to do at first.

Next, at your leisure, decide what roles your group will have. Every group must have at least one Owner (you) and may have others that you designate. Careful, once you make someone an Owner, you can't undo it later. A rental group might have roles for Owner, Manager, and Tenant. A school might have Owner, Teacher, Assistant, Student. And so on.

For each role, you can assign a title, and grant or withhold abilities. Go through these carefully. Especially limit the "Receive group dividends/Pay group liabilities" one...if you sell group owned land, you don't want the proceeds being distributed to all your tenants!

Once you have a group, you can deed land to it, and donate tier to cover monthly costs. Groups get a 10% bonus on tier.

There is some info here that I found helpful:
http://desperationisle.blogspot.com/2007/09/knowing-when-to-deed-your-land.html

Thanks, everybody! I set up the group and deeded both properties to it. It doesn't look like I screwed anything up too badly, although I did not check on the two skyboxes this morning...I'll assume they are still there Appreciate the help from everyone.

One thing to remember, DON'T set the autoreturn (leave as zero) before you set all your prims to group. Otherwise as soon as you set autoreturn, your skyboxes will go poof, into your Lost and Found folder.

Umm, Well, I did learn that the hard way...I'm getting pretty good at re-rezzing my little house and getting it aligned with the fireplace and security orb and furniture and TP pad, specially now that I know if I sit in the house before changing the Z value I go up with it...thanks! Jackie

For each avatar, go into the group and look at the land tab to see who much tier that avatar is donating to the group.
You may have some tier left over on each avatar due to the 10% bonus.

Also for larger properties its often cheaper to have all premiums donating their full 512, and have a single avatar donate any extra tier over that.
This is because it becomes more and more cost effective to buy tier the larger the amount.

Yes, we each donated our full 512m and now my account shows that I'm only liable for 466m and have 46m unused. Looks like things are working as advertised. Thanks.

disable group liabilities for all roles other than 'owner'.

Also, if you decide to invite another person into your group so they can build, set as home, or whatever, don't forget to look at the financial buttons. (Can't remember the exact name of the button at the moment, but it's pretty self explanatory when you're in group settings.)

I had a third person in a group and had this set to something like "Share all" and when I sold a piece of land, it split the money evenly between us all even though that person hadn't paid any portion of the purchase price.

never let it drop lower than two members or it will be disabled..

this was something simple i forgot when i started my business group and got the message that i needed one more person or my group would go bye bye..