Give group owners the option to make their group exempt from group limits
Fawn Cobalt
One of the biggest problems for those of us whose business is entirely dependent on people joining our groups is that we keep hearing the same old words from SL residents: "I can't join your group because I am maxed out on groups." While the best solution would be for LL to get rid of group limits, what I am proposing would benefit both Linden Lab and group owners. Give group owners the option to pay a fee to Linden Lab to make their group exempt from the group limits. This would give group owners the choice to not pay and have their groups not affected, or the choice to pay the fee which would then make their group exempt from the group limits and anyone could join it regardless of how many other groups they are members of. The fee would be a source of additional revenue for Linden Lab. So this proposal would benefit everyone. Let's please do something about people not being able to join groups due to these limits. Thank you.
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Beatrice Voxel
Groups are tied to land access as well as 'chat channels'... and while the chat and notification functions are not that big of a deal, land management and access levels are indeed an issue when a given avatar has a ton of groups to sift through wrt access and permissions.
Perhaps to make "more groups" viable, the search routines for land/group access need to be revamped. Rather than stepping through all of a resident's groups and checking if there's a parcel that matches up, it should instead compile a list of groups from the parcels, and iterating "does this person have this group? No, flag it as Visitor and go to the next group, otherwise sort out highest level of group privs, THEN go to next group." This means that the number of groups a given resident can have would NOT drag region performance as badly, because the number of groups per region will always be equal to or less than the number of parcels per region.
Jelly Doll
This is DOA .. a better solution would be to unhook social and promotional groups from land ownership and remove the valid technical need for group limits entirely (groups are non trivial server side).
Spiffy Voxel
Wouldn't it be a lot easier to use a subscriber box instead? It gives most of the benefits of a group, minus quite a few of the drawbacks such as spamming of group chat. Plus, if folks have Offline IM enabled, they'll see update messages on email and avoid running into message caps, particularly if they're Basic accounts. And you avoid the occasional awkwardness of group notice attachments not always downloading, meaning a trip to the relevant group profile to find the notice and download the attachment from there.
Come to think of it, this proposal could turn out to be self-defeating since the message caps will remain the same for the group members, so more groups means potentially more notices get capped.
I understand the frustration, as I'm a Basic account now (it works out better for me in terms of monthly budgeting) and currently have about 14 free group slots, so am wary of joining groups unless absolutely necessary. But this proposal seems, to me, to create more problems than it solves.
AlettaMondragon Resident
Spiffy Voxel Maybe communication needs to be two-sided. If I'm not confusing Fawn with someone else now (sorry, bad name memory and not online inworld at the moment) their services might include the customers seeking services (for example sightseeing tours) in the group chat. I might be totally wrong here, but it does make sense.
Another thing is live singers, musicians, DJs or any kind of performer, they normally need to join the land group of each venue to rez, control the stream, etc. If they perform at many places, this also leads to their group slots filling up quickly.
Subscribers can't substitute groups in either case.
From an "end user" perspective though, I dislike subscriber devices a lot. I can't see anywhere what subscribers I might have or might have not touched, can't unsubscribe remotely, or at all without having to ask its owner, even if it's a click I need to hunt the device down to touch it. Gruesome. I rather join groups and I can drop the groups whenever I want, sitting at home or randomly browsing and trashing unnecesary ones on the list when bored for a minute, etc.
AlettaMondragon Resident
Spiffy Voxel Oh by the way, on the offline IM cap. You DO run into the cap inworld even if you got them in email. You just keep getting them in email even after reaching the cap. However, bug or limitation, if you receive a reply from email to your earlier IM, you will NOT receive an offline email of that! So if you hit the offline IM cap and then someone answers your IM from email, you'll lose that message completely.
Rowan Amore
If everyone were allowed basically an unlimited amount of exempt groups, this would effect region performance. Groups are tied to land permissions so each time you enter a region, the system has to sort through all of those groups and decide which permissions you are allowed on that land. There IS a valid reason for limits.
Spiffy Voxel
Rowan Amore I didn't know that — TIL! Hmm, perhaps this is a factor in why some folks are particularly susceptible to crashes at region crossing…?
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xDancingStarx Resident
"So this proposal would benefit everyone."
In a competitive group space (for example stores) this would put store owners under pressure to make their group exempt from the limit. It would favor creators that are already bigger since they could afford it. It would disadvantage smaller creators and increase the divide between small and big creators. It would also make it harder for new creators. While customers would benefit short term, measures to shift income from smaller creators to bigger creators could disadvantage customers long term. Creators who are paying for this feature will also long term try to tunnel these additional costs to their customers. Objectively this proposal would not benefit everyone.
Another point that is unclear to me:
Should a group exempt from group limit still occupy a group slot? Means: It's clear that a basic user with 50 groups can still join the exempt group, but does it mean they have 51 groups now or 50?
Put in a different way: A basic user joins 50 groups that are all except from the limit. Can they still join a group that is not exempt from limits or do they now have 50 slots occupied and they can't join any non exempt group anymore?
Fawn Cobalt
xDancingStarx Resident, thanks for your feedback. Obviously this will all need to be discussed and worked out, but under my current proposal, someone with a group limit of 50 groups would be able to join up to 50 non-exempt groups and an unlimited number of exempt groups. That is, everyone would still have the ability to join 50 groups but would also be able to join groups that the owner has decided to make exempt in addition to their 50.
AlettaMondragon Resident
I have a feeling the system couldn't handle that kind of sophistication. In a technical sense this is a great idea. I agree with DancingStar however that it wouldn't help with the already big... huge gap between established and startup creators, especially since I assume such a fee to exclude your group from group limits wouldn't be like a one-time payment of L$300. And then even with a high fee, many people would buy that token for their completely useless groups too just because they can - while new creators couldn't afford it or wouldn't be their priority to spend on it - so it would come with the risk of some unnecessary load on servers, because you know how people are... they see "this group doesn't take away your group slots!" in the description so they'll join all of those just because they can.
Jennifer Boyle
xDancingStarx ResidentIf the fee were on a per-member basis, the impact on small businesses would not be disproportionate. I'm thinking something like $0.001 to $0.01 per month or quarter.