More group types or options needed!

Everyone who tries to organize groups or manage group land and dwell knows that the current group setup is incredibly restricting. Inappropriate recall elections, dwell split among throngs of non-contributing members, officers having the ability to appropriate land for themselves -- these are only some of the issues.

Groups absolutely have to be redesigned to offer more choices. While some groups are a democratic group of peers with chosen leaders (actually very few that I'm aware of), other groups aren't run this way and should not be subject to recalls and profit sharing.

We need to have more group options:

* The option to make officers either elected or appointed. Appointed officers should not subject to recall.

* Only officers recieve group dwell and other group money.

* Dwell ando ther group money is split proportionally by tier contribution.

* More than two types of membership. Currently there is only officer and member. It would be nice to have a "president" level and maybe a lowest level. Serf? Each level should be assigned privileges by the president.

* Ability to choose which group members can sell and re-parcel the land to avoid risks to land investments. If 1 member buys land worth hundreds of US dollars, is it fair to ask him/her to risk letting any officer make off with his/her land?

What if groups came with three default membership levels, you could configure the rights assigned to each level, and even add more levels if you need them? That would allow the flexibility to customize the structure to any scenario.

Want a dictatorship? No problem: El Presidente, Appointed Generals, and Serfs. A business might be: CEO, board members, shareholders, and customers. An artists' collective might be: directors, contributor, artist members.

To get to specifics, each level might have these options that the most senior member can change:

[ ] Receives group dwell.
[ ] Can modify land.
[ ] Can sell land.
[ ] Receives group dividends.
[ ] Is subject to recall.
[ ] Can initiate a recall.
[ ] Can invite new members up to membership level: x
[ ] Can be ejected by members of level x and higher
[ ] Can modify membership level options.

etc... Those are just examples. I'm sure the specifics would need more time to be hammered out in sufficient detail.

If groups were composed of customizable membership levels, they'd be a lot more stable and adaptable to any situation.

PLEASE, Linden Lab, can you consider adding more group types or more options to customize how our groups work?

Generally good, but it would also be helpful to be able to keep group assets (e.g. money) in a group account which can be accessed by officers or others according to set permissions, rather than automatically distributing L$. Groups could sell objects and collect proceeds, collect donations, plant Money Trees, etc. It would also be helpful to be able to have referral bonuses go to groups.

There are some existing proposals to change the group structures in the voting system, but I didn't like how any of them were worded (nor did they link to a discussion), so I didn't vote for any of them. You might want to propose this and link to this forum.

neko

Robin Linden mentioned once that the "group structure" was being revamped, and that the notion of "bank accounts" - which could be either group owned or accessed by an ad-hoc list of avatars - were also in the works.

In the mean time, I tried to talk Apotheus to do something similar using SL Exchange. After all, you can transfer money into and out of SL Exchange. It should be possible to transfer L$ between registered users there. If you had an option of "sharing" an account, well - all would be perfect, then! You'd have a sort of "PayPal for Second Life".

Implementing those features with an off-world web site is quite easy, actually (and you can build all the sort of "permission levels" there... say, people being able to be paid from the account, but not able to view it... being able to deposit money there on an account, but not withdraw... viewing the finantial details, but being unable to withdraw... or full permissions!). The technology is not "out of this world": what counts is, how much you trust the person running the site! That's the only limitation.