Interesting Article/Analogy about Groups

An interesting article about groups found here:
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2006/01/imagine_if_the_.html

I found this to be a very thought provoking analogy about the current state of group tools and well worth the read.

It get's a bit "Prok-like" at the end in that it veers ever so slightly towards the same old ideological drum beating that Prok readers are familiar with, but not as much as usual. The first part especially is humorous and quite insightful.

He can't resist getting angry of course and describing the current tools as "hipppie commune" (what is it with the "H" word lately?) tools or particularly ideologically driven which is a mistake in my view. He also completely misses (or ignores), the fact that his proposed alternative tools are either similarly ideologically driven (if you think the current ones are), or an ideologicaly based replacement for what are (in my veiw), just "generic" and poorly thought out tools.

In other words as usual, the only one with a seriously ideologically driven agenda here is the one calling everyone else by the same name. However, he is also saying that the tools could encompass multiple such ideologies (what I would call simply "uses", and the article is fairly balanced overall I think.

I found it interesting anyway, and I am posting this for discussion as I believe that his thread on it can't be followed up on?

The twenty-four checkbox idea is a prime example of techi-wiki thinking that a tool is a merely a tool and should be utterly flexible so that living groups of people can use them however they see fit. It's a nice juxtaposition to LL's standard attitude of building tools that force us into a mold to facilitate their social engineering observations.

It's sad that such practical thinking gets lost in the steady diatribe of political rhetoric.

Read the Trust article too. It seems that people, including the folks at LL, may be trying to facilitate "justaddtools" communities that are able to work together, straight out of the box, without requiring that those involved actually spend the time learning to trust, or not to trust, each other. Older groups are often cited as special cases that can never be reproduced when, what's really meant, is that we don't want to expend the effort of forming a solid group.

Such an attitude is to be expected in a virtual world where relative time is so vastly accelerated as it is in Second Life and where most groups seem to function under a single, or small group of, dynamic leader(s). It's all the more reason to implement a cookie-cutter group tool rather than revise the socially inept tool we have now.

I found the article interesting as well. I like the idea of having a 'smorgasbord' for groups: allowing us the flexibility to form the group type that best fits the need.

What I wouldn't give to be able to convert to a group type that kept the land ownership and finances secure, but allowed me to delegate the day to day functions of returning objects, or managing the ban list - to others.

I sincerely hope Linden listens to all the discussion on the subject and takes our feedback into the design process - rather than throwing something they think we want at us and asking questions later.

The current Pizza Guy article is even better. The analogy is wonderfully apt and complete. If the Lindens can't understand our concerns after reading it, or are unwilling to follow the stated suggestions after reading it, we'll just have to accept that working in the best interest of their residents is not in their best interest.

But what I expect is oh never mind it'll just make me cry to talk about it.

I thought it was a particualrly apt analogy too.

I have been thinking about this a lot because I live on an island with a group of women friends and we are all officers of each others groups for convienience. Prok would say we are using the groups in classic "hippie commnue" mode, but so far everything is fine and dandy because we are all nice smart people and get along great.

But having lived in communal situations (okay yes, they were *actual* hippy communes ), in RL, I know also that housemates can fight, politics can intervene and relationships can break up. When you stop to think of all the horrible things that could be done by virtue of the fact that most of us can edit or delete each others property and stuff, the mind boggles.

The only choice you are left with sometimes is to be paranoid and secretive, or to leave everytign open as we do, and hope that it all works out.

Better tools are definitley needed, and tools that reflect corporate structures (as Prok wants), as well as more collaborative ones like others want.

This excerpt of Prokogy Neva's post has appeared before, and here it is again:



I would add to this list the ability to have group forums which are only visible to group members, thus making persistent discussion readily available to a group, and being able to join at least many hundreds of groups, and being able to turn off the group chat.

Here's my version:

o Is Founder
o Names Group
o Invites Members
o Expels Members
o Names Titles
o Names Land and Describes Land
o Puts Land in Find Places
o Sets Landing Point
o Returns Prims
o Parcels Land
o Sets URLs
o Sells Land
o Purchases Land
o Announces Events
o Makes Proposals for Votes
o Initiates Group IMs
o Deeds Objects
o Determines Income Distribution
o Determines Dwell Distribution
o Terraforms

Founder is the one feature that needs to be a radio button for everyone. The initial founder would have to pay the 100L and have the founder button, as well as all checkboxes selected. Then they, and only they, could check another member off as founder. The current founder would always have all checkboxes selected (they would own the group), and would always have the option of selecting another founder to pass final control to that member.

The options needn't include Invites or Expels Officers as there's no actual differential in membership status. Each member simply has a serious of checkboxes that grant various permissions. I suppose a person could refer to themselves as "officer" if they were granted such rights as inviting members or naming land; but in fact, under this system all members have equal opportunity to have any give box checked. Titles are a text box next to each members checkboxes so everybody can have their own. Again, this allows for a variable number of member "levels" and associated titles.

Paying Purchase Price for Land and Pays Tier would be better handled by imposing these permissions on land that was set to a group we belonged to rather than FORCING omgz I said forcing us to DEED the land to the group. That's the silly part. For emphasis let me repeat FORCING us to DEED land to a group in order to enact group permissions on the land is SILLY. Why can't different people OWN the land and simply SHARE it with the group knowing that other group members will have permission to USE it with whatever features are checked for them.

For group IMs, it seems reasonable that any member could participate in a session once it was begun, at least until the initiator closed it. Then it should close for everyone.

Finally, distributing income and dwell are checkable features but should also be integer boxes for each member so that people with the appropriate permissions could enter percentages of income or dwell that would be paid to individuals. It would have to add up to 100% of course so I suppose any excess could default to the founder and the program would have to not allow overages.

Feel free to pick this apart.

I think this is brilliant.

This part especially, since the whole difference between officers and members is kind of a moot point.
In almost every group I belong to, anyone who is seriously involved on any level is an "officer" (becasue you can't *do* anything if your not), and most of the "members" are just alts or casual hangers on. If one wants to get together with friends on some group land project, eventually (or even as a prerequisite), you all have to be officers of the group, which opens it up to all kinds of abuse and foolishness.

With a system like you have described here, a person in the group could be designated as any number of things, with a specific unique title realtive to their duties within the group and the capabilities they need to perform that role. Someone could be given a role as a DJ on a club project for example, they have the ability to change the URL and whatever else necessary and their title says "DJ" insead of "officer" or "member."

This is so rational, Linden Labs will nevr go for it. (kidding)

OMG I would be thrilled to have groups work that way!

Though, one semi-serious dark-chocolate bit of humour must be added.

What click-box can you check, to control who clicks the click-boxes?

[x] Can click the boxes

heh!

100% agree with Khamon's thoughts above. I'll be doing a little happy dance if these ideas come to pass

This ideas deserves support not just from people who want to be in the groups and use the vastly improved tools, but also from people who just want to have cooler, neater places and activities in SL so they can have more and better fun.

If lazy bums like me want other people to make neat places and products and events for our pleasure we need to help them get better tools to do it with.

What are the chances of something like this being implemented? It requires a complete rewrite of LL's overall impression of what a group is as well as the group code itself. The proposal describes an utterly flexible tool with no preconceived notion of how it may, or should, be used. That doesn't adhere to the proven social engineering mission. It's good that someone at Linden Lab finally admitted their agenda openly; but that's a far cry from them realizing its folly, giving it up, and providing pure tools.

I still have my hopes that they'll come to their senses eventually and leave the social engineering to us by providing us with the most flexible tools possible. Time will tell.

I think this can happen as all the evidence suggests to me that they have already given up on the whole "social controls" thing (at least at large), and look forward to self-organising communities evolving naturaly out of the grid as opposed to imposing their own order upon it.

I have been here not quite a year, and I have seen almost all the social controls that existed when I began (limited as those were), systematically removed one by one. Other than a minimal level of compaining about low-order nuisances (AR reports), I don't see that they wish to interfere at all any longer.

If this is true, then what they would (or should), be aiming for right now is exactly these kinds of proposals. Tools that allow the flexibility for such communities to develop. I wouldn't be surprised if they ware working on proposals similar to this themselves (assuming they have had the time to even think about it).

Now I'm wondering who those small teams of people are after submitting suggestions and requesting to serve on the group reformation committee for years. I shall cry if they complete the whole process without me.

I want the ability to define 'roles' per user, with special group titles per role instead of having a bunch of groups. All those other functions are fine too, tho.

Those functions are great, but maybe in an Advanced tab or something. When creating a group, I'd expect it to be set up with good default roles (as in an untouchable founder, officers with power, and regular members) but with the ability to tweak. 80% of the population would probably use the group defaults as-is, and would make things a whole lot simpler.

And that was a good article.