A Group Land Idea

The requirement that land be deeded to a group in order to function as "group land" has always been a source of confusion to me. It seems a reasonable method to allow group members, and officers, to use land that is individually owned, but assigned to a group, in the same manner that we currently do group-owned land.

People don't have to give up or worry about losing their land to participate in a group project. Officers have full rights to the land other than being able to sell it. Dwell is still payed to the individual land owners rather than the group. Deeding is still available if people want to literally group the land for any reason.

I understand this requires some porgramming, but wonder if some of the object sharing and editing permissions code could be used to set it up. Primarily though, I'm wondering if there's any interest in pursuing the idea.

P.S. Do people use the editing permissions we can assign to people through calling cards? There are three people that can freely edit any of my objects. I trust them explicitly; well, obviously.

I tried this once about a year ago and it didn't work very well at that time. I don't remember what all the issues were. I tried sharing my edit permissions with an alt to see if the alt could modify a build, but there were several things that the alt was unable to do, even with the edit permission. At the time, I decided it was pretty much useless.

I'd be interested to know if it's improved and if people have found it genuinely useful for collaboration. Maybe I should give it another try.

My GF and I have edit permissions on each others stuff and it barely works at all.

We are constantly getting hung up on things that we *cant* do to the others objects. It sort of works but you have to allow about ten minutes each time you want to do somethng just to sort out *why* it isn't working and what you have to do to fix it. It's a very counter-intutive process in that you would assume that checking that box means that the other person can simply edit anything you have made as long as all the stuff in it is stuff you made etc. but that is not the case at all.

As far as I remember the last time we talked about it you have to do "share with group" and to be both wearing the same group for it to even work. You also have to specifically allow it and set these things for each item in the objects inventory one by one. It's incredibly unwieldy at best.

Onthe other hand simply making someone an officer in your group allows them the power to destroy everything you have made and all your lands! And "deeding" something you made to a group (even your own group) makes that object forever lost to you, uneditable and unretrievable from the group! Ha-Ha!

It would be funny except its kind of sad as well.

I didn't know about the deeding object to a group part.

I did know about the officers part. I would no sooner expect my officers to purposely mess up our land or anything like that than I would expect to suddenly sprout wings and fly out of this rl chair.

coco

Land ownership and land usage are definitely be separate items. I think that this is the biggest stumbling block for collaborative efforts. I really don't understand why someone sponsoring a project or owning a club has to put their land ownership in jeopardy in order to share permissions.

I do use the editing perms option. One of the handiest uses for that was short term. A new person gave me permission when I was trying to assist her in setting up her prefab house. It was very simple and expedient for her to grant and remove permission for me to edit her things.

LL started a new forum just for discussions of future of groups, and will be doing some focus group meetings on the topic.

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Maybe I was over emphasizing or maybe I am slow, but I have nightmares trying to figure those permissions out and having other people edit your stuff.

It's certainly not as easy as just saying "yes, this person can edit all my stuff." Maybe the house prims had nothing in them and that was why it was easier?

I collaborate with several folks, and still do with the building/changing/upkeep of the Shelter. One of the ways we do this is by exchanging calling card permissions, and associating the land (owned by me) to a group for autoreturn purposes.

Calling Card permissions are a mixed blessing from my experience.

On the one hand - its great to be able to edit each other's objects.

On the other hand - watch what happens when you accidentally "Take" an object you have CC permissions for into your inventory, realize your mistake - then drop it back down....

What ends up happening, is you are now the owner of that object - with next owner permissions. Because next owner perms default to most restrictive, the end result is ugly.

The back half of the Pool at the Shelter became no-mod because of exactly this

Don't get me wrong - Calling Card perms are awesome. I just wish that there was a way to overcome the perm issue other than manually making sure every object involved is set to full-perm before collaboration commences.

I tried using this with an alt - granting it permissions to edit, and having it grant me permissions to edit its stuff. It more or less worked, until the alt wanted to link the original part of the work in progress to stuff it had worked on. I got a lot of error messages, even though the permissions were really unrestrictive (I think I even set it to next owner full perms); I couldn't link both parts together either logged in with the alt account, or with my primary account. Net result: had to redo all the alt's work as the primary account. So no, I'm not using that "feature" anymore.

I'm stunned and amazed that everybody's replied about calling card permissions rather than the discussing the point of the thread. Jarod the Destroyer of Threads suggested the P.S. in the original post. Grandiose plots of revenge and mayhen must be formed against him.

I'm a bit confused about your original post. Are you saying we shouldn't have to deed land to a group in or for the members to use the land and make collaborative builds? If that's what you're saying I agree.

There must be a more simple way. Deeding land makes it possible for any officer of the group to sell your plot. Is this a prerequisite for a group project? I don't think so.

Yes, If I simply assign land to a group, that should be enough "sharing" of the land for group officers to be able to edit the terrain and change all of the settings except for the for sales settings.

To have to give the land up by deeding it to the group is my point of confusion. As I'm posting in the SL forum, I'm compelled to explain that I'm not suggesting that LL delete the ability to deed land to a group.

This is not an either/or. It's simply an idea to enhance the existing group assignment feature in the land settings to include full group rights over the parcel other than the ability to sell it.

well khamon I gather that they're currently evaluating both this new zoning/covenant and an overhaul of the group system... so things are in the works


and yes, assigning modify rights is essentially useless for any sort of sophisticated collaborative building. You can move someone else's prims and a few other things, but nowhere near what is needed.

That's not what I said you should ask... My point was this:

Would premissions and land deeding and junk be simpler if "Land" was an option on Calling Cards. People have been soiling themselves for months about permissions and groups and wondering if Linden Lab would ho'd dere widdle hands in de big bad wold when it came to groups. My entire reason for bringing up Calling Cards to you was to suggest that if people (friends, partners, co-developers) could be given direct permission to edit land, like they can objects, would that not make groups completely obsolete and make collaboration possible?

Oh

Well

Sooooo

We would then essentially form groups by piling calling cards into a folder and assigning some of them land editing perms. We have to create group folders anyway in order to be able to IM everyone in the group so

Sooooo

We can duplicate calling cards in our inventory so we could essentially form and manage any number of groups this way shared land and all. I gotta think this through. We might not need group reform as much as we need calling card reform.

Basically...

Groups are a lie perpetrated by land barons to foster a sense of hierarchy. They perpetrate this lie to maintain their original lie of in-world scarcity. The entire reason people -- and I'm being kind to include land barons in that set -- want groups and better group code and group permissions is so they can maintain power over new players. "Come to my mall, rent my space, don't strike out on your own, don't bother owning land, pay me, one world, one grid, blah, blah, blah..."

When you start thinking in terms of permissions on a Calling Card -- like I do, and seem to be the only one who does -- the need for groups and all their limitations vanish. You aren't limited to a minimum of three people, you aren't limited to fifteen groups at a time, you can form partnerships without having to worry about... About... Ninja pizza deliverators stealing your company?

God, you people just completely rape the joy out of that book, don't you.

Anyway, point is, group code is dumb as it implies a centralized permission hub. Calling Card permissions -- likely, much to Philip and Cory Lindens' horror -- are extensible beyond one world and one grid. Which, come to think of it, is why we'll probably always have groups. Revolutions happen when people can form and maintain groups beyond the government's control, and didn't Philip say they were trying to create a government?

hehe - sorry, Khamon. I guess I read your original post, saw the end snippet and said to myself "ooh - I want to comment on that"

As for your original core idea, of allowing folks to loosely associate parcels together for the purposes of collaboration, but without giving up individual land ownership rights: I think its a great concept.

I'm very interested in the idea, and have been hoping for something similar, but slightly different from what you're proposing:

Pretty much, I'd love the idea to grant full land privledges to others on my parcel, such as using the eject & return object features, without giving up the ownership of the land.

What would be even cooler, is if there was some way to have a group/association where the founder of that group/association remained the landowner, but permissions could be shared - and tier could be donated without any loss of ownership.

(Not that you need it), but imagine if folks with spare bits of tier could donate parts of it to Fate Gardens, while still keeping the full ownership of the land in your hands to help you offset your tier costs. Today, there's no way to do that unless you deed your land to a group first - and when you do that, technically, you're no longer the owner of your land anymore: the group is.