Joining more Groups

[Josie Hyun]

Can Linden Lab allow us to have something like 300 groups we all can join. I know 300 is alot but most of them will be of clothes & body stores.

[Daniel Regenbogen]

Be glad it is 42 already, it was only 25 not that long ago. If I remember correctly the problem is what group membership is used for. It is amongst other things used to grant or deny land access, and at each parcel crossing the system has to check if you are a member of an allowed group or not - and it seems to make a big difference in system load if it has to check 42 or 300 groups.

 

Would be easier if there were different kinds of groups, like "managing groups" and "social groups".

[Freya Mokusei]

Threeeeeeeeeee hundred. That's a good number, but why not six thousand? Fourteen thousand? The sky's the limit, and pie-in-the-sky numbers make perfect sense when you have no clue of what's going on.

Groups in Second Life were originally intended to share and organise permissions and tier. They also comprised Roles, allowing some to have more power than others within the group. They expanded a little to compensate for peoples' willingness to group up and socialise within these groups, though chat has never worked. Mostly the intention has always been that having a connection to a group should be a meaningful thing - group members should be somehow invested with the functioning of the group.

Groups are not, and never have been designed for one-to-many marketing or simple authentication checks - their processes are too heavy and their resources too large. There are several significantly cheaper (resource-wise), more effective and less obtrusive options of testing interest or providing 'paid' access to VIP content than using groups. The modern swing toward stores using groups makes no sense from an administration point of view, and it will almost definitely not be encouraged. There's no way anyone can have a meaningful relationship with 300 groups, that's double Dunbar's number in groups.

 

[Qie Niangao]

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most of them will be of clothes & body stores.

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Yeah, you need to complain to those stores. They're doing it wrong. (If they're also charging for group membership, they're doing you wrong!)

The odd thing is, groups are just so very, very crippled, which makes it baffling that so many merchants insist on using the things even though they're totally opaque to scripts.

[Emma Krokus]

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Freya Mokusei wrote:

Threeeeeeeeeee hundred. That's a good number, but why not six thousand? Fourteen thousand? The sky's the limit, and pie-in-the-sky numbers make perfect sense when you have no clue of what's going on.

Groups in Second Life were originally intended to share and organise permissions and tier. They also comprised Roles, allowing some to have more power than others within the group. They expanded a little to compensate for peoples' willingness to group up and socialise within these groups, though chat has never worked. Mostly the intention has always been that having a connection to a group should be a meaningful thing - group members should be somehow invested with the functioning of the group.

Groups are not, and never have been designed for one-to-many marketing or simple authentication checks - their processes are too heavy and their resources too large.

There are several significantly cheaper (resource-wise), more effective and less obtrusive options of testing interest or providing 'paid' access to VIP content than using groups.

The modern swing toward stores using groups makes no sense from an administration point of view, and it will almost definitely not be encouraged. There's no way anyone can have a meaningful relationship with 300 groups, that's double Dunbar's number in

groups

.

 

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This is interesting - I would like to know what these options are, Freya. Thank you!

 

Emma

[Freya Mokusei]

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Emma Krokus wrote:

This is interesting - I would like to know what these options are, Freya. Thank you!

 

Emma

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SQL, XML, LSL and a whole bunch of other languages (perhaps a combination, depending on the method you take). It takes about an hour of any professionals time. You could do this with notecards if you were a masochist.

There is no need to tie-up Account/Group resources with simple auth tests - groups are too complex - it's just they're the easiest route. But they're one of the most cluttered, least functional and poorly responsive array systems that I've ever used. All of the suggestions above would be far lighter, much faster, and computationally cheaper. They wouldn't contain useless 'fluff' features (such as roles, which are redundant in one-to-many marketing) or tie up a group slot in users profiles.

[Perrie Juran]

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Qie Niangao wrote:

---

most of them will be of clothes & body stores.

---

Yeah, you need to complain to those stores. They're doing it wrong. (If they're also charging for group membership, they're doing

you

wrong!)

The odd thing is, groups are just so very, very crippled, which makes it baffling that so many merchants insist on using the things even though they're totally opaque to scripts.

---

I do wonder if some Merchant's saw having their group listed in someone's profile as an additional way to advertise, though being in someone's Picks is probably a litle better.  I have wound up going to stores that I saw in Picks.

I do somewhat understand the nominal fee some charge for groups because they do group gifts.  People join long enough to get the gifts and then leave.  The quality of most group gifts is such I wouldn't waste my $L joining but there are a few stores the quality makes it well worth it.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

The only time i will pay to join a store group is if by joining I get a substantial discount at a store I frequent, not for 'free' gifts, which aren't free if you have to pay to get them.

 

[Josie Hyun]

With the kind of money we all pumping into Second Life Linden Lab should be moe into make us happy.