Group Auditing, Features, and General Overhaul
Mesmer Macabre
There are a number of quality of life improves that could be made for groups within SL. Restricted to officers & owners (or even owner only), these could help properly manage a larger group size or those with moderators to effectively manage and adhere to group rules.
- General auditing: This can be useful for a number of groups, especially paid ones, where a user can be listed as to when they joined, or a list of which users have left, and by what means. Such as, left voluntarily, or ejected. This would be helpful for those with groups which go through payment cycles to ensure a user has paid before a specific day as they claim, or to understand why a user is no longer within a group. It also helps to welcome new group users and assist them more where necessary.
- Logging: Logging and flagging messages where users may report a message that they require moderators to follow up on, and owners to go back and re-read through the logs to review any actions taken. This can also include deleting messages (such as scam/phishing links, which are a problem lately).
- Strike System: Where users may be issued first, second, and final warnings before being ejected/banned. This can help moderate the group to understand why the user has been warned and - if notes are appropriate - inform other moderators of which rules have been violated.
- Rule agreement upon joining: Where users may read and agree to a set amount of rules given upon joining said group. This could also give users an idea of what they will get within the group, such as gifts, notices, land, experiences, etc. More space would be desired within the group description that would list these rules and expectations, and their confirmation of acknowledgement before they can enter. This would also benefit from a similar system as the marketplace, with numerous translation options available for those who speak another language than the group's primary, changeable via a tab system if available.
- Scheduled Notices: This is usually done with external systems but would be a great benefit to a number of groups where notices can go out when events begin, scheduled in advance. Notices could also be reviewed by other staff / moderators with appropriate permissions to ensure everything works seamlessly.
- Longer notice length: Currently, the notice length cap is a bit too short to get every detail in fully. Sometimes, a notice goes out well but then is missing a part of it when visited in the group profile, chopping off messages and links.
- Options to include more than one attachment: This is handy if an object, LM, and/or notecard needs to go out all at once.
Ultimately, I believe that groups may benefit greatly from a general overhaul to improve them for many different user types and how they are utilised. They are a bit dated now, and need to be treated with a bit more features to catch up with how fast Second Life has grown. The most we can do at the moment is mute, eject, ban, and warn, but we need more options to moderate chat and make it safer for everyone within.
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Riot Daddy
The ability to delete notices would be amazing too!
Also, the ability to limit who can send a link. This alone would cut down on so many scams
Girl Crush
As I understand it - groups were made with the intention of land management, and were imagined to have maybe 20 people in them max.
So, while I understand that fundamentally changing groups at its core would be a tought and long process for the developers/engineers - I do agree that something needs to be done about how groups work in SL.
Groups are too easily infiltrated by bots and scam accounts making your vulnerable residents suseptable to be taken advantage of. When (we) as an owner or moderator of a group become aware of it, the damage is already done. If we want to remove, block or flag any content by offending users, finding them in the overflowing lists becomes an all day task, pagination would help this. A rules page would help this. Better moderation tools would help this.
Every week it becomes more and more attractive to skip using groups in-world all together, because the ammount of abuse residents face simply being in groups is unacceptable.
All groups are afflicted by these issues, big or small. Many groups have turned off the chat feature to mitigate scams, because not a single person can be chronically tuned into their group enough to protect the people they are trying to reach with groups.
LL increased group limits for all residents, but what for, if not to improve how groups work at their core.
Communicating with genuine residents in-world has always been the best way to build and foster community in SL - and that community building is bogged down by so many things that COULD be improved uppon.
Zii Minotaur
I feel like brands and customers are focusing on social media like Discord because SL's inworld groups are so lacking in features. They really need improvement!
Girl Crush
Zii Minotaur Maybe a new feature separate from groups could help.
"Communities" - Groups can exist as is if they dont want to break how they work now, introduce a new way to manage and connect with people.
Zandrae Nova
Girl Crush Let us convert our groups into communities, so our land group stays a group and communities are something else.
Change the groups tab to include both communities and groups.
Increase allowance by for 5 that are only used by groups that must be groups. Basically. Land groups.
tellemonstar Resident
Ten thousand percent agree with all of this. I'm a moderator in two groups, plus have my own store group. Being able to see when a person left (or was removed), to give them a warning that all moderators can see, etc without having to rely on third party systems like a spreadsheet would be so useful. Being able to delete scam, phishing and all the other spam messages that get posted would be amazing. So many new people to SL are surprised when we tell them we can't delete the messages.