Knowledge Base Article of the Week #17: Oh Where O Where did my group go?
Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 7:13 PM by: Kate LindenHello everyone! I’m Kate and I will be joining Jon and Jeremy to bring you Knowledge Base Articles of the week!
Last week Jeremy gave you tips about partnering, and today we’ll sift through Knowledge Base Article of the Week: Why was my group disbanded?(You’ll be asked to login.)
Simply, at least two members are necessary to keep a group from disbanding. Once you form a new group, you have 48 hours to add another member to keep your group active. If all your group members have left, (maybe the group next door is offering free donuts) you have 48 hours to make a friend and add them to your group. It’s that easy to keep a group active.
It is a good idea to keep your group active if the group has land and L$. Click the link above to learn more.
We’d love to hear your Knowledge Base suggestions at the Documentation office hours, Fridays at 2PM in Beaumont.
See you there!
Kate Linden
February 21st, 2008 at 7:18 PM
Use an alt.
February 21st, 2008 at 7:21 PM
Invalid query string on the link to the article.
February 21st, 2008 at 7:28 PM
Yeah, now that alts are free, it is easy to keep a group active ^__^
February 21st, 2008 at 7:59 PM
Dear Lindens,
Please do something about the group IM problems, it’s really getting bad
February 21st, 2008 at 8:06 PM
Use an Alt to insure your group has at least 2 members. Don’t rely on LL to inform you that your group is about to go under. It doesn’t always work.
February 21st, 2008 at 8:07 PM
Well i cant speak for others, but I just recently had a group poof and it had 3 members in it, so I’m thinking this may need to be expounded apon, thanks.
February 21st, 2008 at 8:07 PM
what good are groups when you cant even stay logged in without crashing every 15 min
February 21st, 2008 at 8:25 PM
Aw Kate, thank you sooooo much for announcing this in the blog, and thank you very much for your help when this happened!
February 21st, 2008 at 8:34 PM
none of my groups list in any viewer after 1.18.3.5 anyway - so if 1.19 is made mandatory - I won’t have any groups to worry about - including my business groups one of which has over 800 members.
… and my Jira issue hasn’t been addressed, and none of my other tickets on the issue have been either.
February 21st, 2008 at 8:48 PM
I had a group disbanded because I neglected to add an alt quick enough… When I asked support (twice!) to reenable it, they said they could do nothing. Their answer is that I should create a group with a new name. I can’t recreate the group with the same name, because it still exists in the system (just cant get to it)
It’s very LAME that they cant reenable a group for the original creator. I mean, yes, I blew it by not adding fast enough, but come on now…
February 21st, 2008 at 9:49 PM
Yup Buckybarkley, that’s pretty lame all right. Any time a company tells me they “can’t do anything” about something, I immediately translate it for them: “You’re too flipping lazy and you don’t care about your customers.”
For LL to say they “can’t” reinitialize a group is about as lame as it comes.
February 21st, 2008 at 10:10 PM
What I want to know is… What happens to disbanded groups? Why can’t the old disbanded group names be recycled back into the mix?
i.e. Group disbanded, members dropped, released.
At least that way if we mess up (we’ve all done it) we have the opportunity to reclaim the name and start over.
February 21st, 2008 at 10:20 PM
You should get your L$100 back when a group is disbanded.
Who cares if you add members or not.
February 21st, 2008 at 10:40 PM
Well I think it is obvious why you can reuse a group name every thing is maintained on something they call an ass-set server and that set of servers still most likely, not totally positive, still has the first piece of junk created in the game along with those unnumbered millions who made an account and have long passed on to other games. If they were to wash the unused accounts and various things such as groups from the data base one might think it would run much smoother. I have a friend who joined over 2 years ago when concurrence was 2500 he logged in yesterday. Seems to me this is an inactive account. When I stopped playing EQ my account was moved to another location, yes they still send me requests to come back but it takes a few days to reload you to the main structure. As far as a refund for the group creation fee I don’t think anyone is going to miss the .40 USD that it costs. It would take more expense to return the funds. The 100 L is charged to at least make people think about creating a group rather than adding them for no reason.
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:01 AM
I’m not usually one to be all RAAAAAGEFUL about SL blog entries (I usually laugh at how many people get completely bent out of shape over positive changes that are OMG TOTALLY GOING TO RUIN THEIR LIVES), but…
I do not like this idea. :/
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:48 AM
I have two things I’d like to say about groups and group IMs. First, I see so many people being rude in group IMs to other members for “using the group IM” to talk. More times than not it is group related. If you do NOT want to see the chat, then leave the group. Another way to shut it out is to simple close the IM. The bottom ‘x’ will close JUST that IM window and wahlah, the chat stops! And last, there are some group owners who yell at the members for using the group IMs. Don’t open a group if you dont want your members to use it.
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:04 AM
To number 16: First, most of the rude responses that I have seen are because it is a group that does not use the IM much and the person is caught off guard, thinking it is a personal IM, not a group IM. If you log into the middle of a slow conversation, getting what appears to be a random and over-familiar IM a few seconds into a SL session is a bit disconcerting. Second, some owners have large product based groups - if that is clear in the charter, it is YOU that should drop out if it bothers you.
And yeah, there are a lot of lame, anti-customer issues in SL. Its been 20 years since changing a prime key was a major deal. What locking the prime keys away (no name changes, group changes etc.) does is force you to spend more money recreating new avatars. Why change a name, even for a couple of bucks of charges, when you can force a person to spend L$ 20,000 if they want to get up to speed quickly? Bad name choices have left a lot of Lindens on the floor in SL, to LL’s benefit.
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:32 AM
Removing disbanded groups from the system could be a problem, because people might have created objects that are set to the respectie group which are still in-world. Furthermore, if you recycled a group name you would suddenly “own” all objects that are deeded to this group, which could become a privacy problem.
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:53 AM
I’ve also had one of my groups disappear because I didn’t add someone quickly enough.
I sent a bug report to LL (I had no idea they were sitting on their hands when it comes to re-enabling disbanded groups and thought it was an error with the system or something) and even recieved a response saying that they are looking into it - but I was never told that they were “unable” to free up the group name so I can make the group again.
What a lame response. Oh that’s right, it was an automated response wasn’t it? So I guess you could say, I got no response from LL at all, unless you consider a circular as a response. Totally, totally lame. I want my $L100 back!!!
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:21 AM
It would have been useful if this was brought to people’s attention before now. I have had two groups disappear…that’s 200L stolen from me. Why, when a Group is created and messages come up, does it not state this…or is it just another nice little Linden earner.
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:39 AM
Maybe you should add that Group names have to be unoffensive.
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:44 AM
I’m sorry for my sarcasm, but i’m missing much more important knowledgebase articles:
Oh Where O Where did my GROUP-IM go?
Oh Where O Where did my INVENTORY go?
Oh Where O Where did my FRIENDSLIST go?
and last but not least
Oh Where O Where did my FUN go (with all this problems)?
I believe that this article could be interesting to someone, but much more important is a full functionally communication system.
Shall i write for each group-IM problem a support ticket? Ok, i could do that, but in this case you would get at least 15-20 Supporttickets each day (from me only!).
Don’t tell us your aware of this problem, because we have this problem round about a half year and i don’t believe that havok4 or dazzle will fix this problem.
Is it too much to give the community a full functionally communication system? If you don’t know how it works, take a look at IRC (Internet Relay Chat). It works since, mh… 19 years? I know that IRC is complete different to SL, but i’m sure that you can use a part of the code for the communication base from SL - IRC supports also TLS, if you think IRC haven’t encryption
So please freeze Dazzle and make the communication working.
Thank you for your appreciation (oops, did i say this?)
Damona
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:44 AM
Unfortunately, it is apparently possible for groups to exist without any members. There’s some group-owned land in the region Lotsawa which is surrounded by my own land. It’s just 32 sq.m. in total and I’ve requested several times to buy these small pieces. Unfortunately, the group has no members thus no one can sell it to me. And all the Lindens whom I’ve chatted with so far have made promises but the situation hasn’t changed.
So, can anyone explain to me why groups with one member are deleted while groups with no members will just exist for all eternity?Did someone just use “NumberOfMembers == 1″ instead of “NumberOfMembers <= 1″?
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:46 AM
To Firestarter @ 16
Some groups use their IM ONLY for admin reasons, events, new products, support, griefing and security etc. these DONT tolerate chit chat on group IM understandably. Abuse of such usually gets you bounced out the group.
Social IMs are encouraged in some instances, some are meant to be used that way, not too difficult to work out which is which.
I dont personally like Chit chat on group IMs generally as it constantly interrupts my SL experience closing the infernal IMs down. Some tough is needed for making RP contacts etc. As such the groups that seem full of worthless prattle I just leave. Simple! isnt it?
just weigh up if the benefits of beng in the group outway the inconvenience of the interuptions and act accordingly sweetheart.
February 22nd, 2008 at 3:04 AM
I had the same problem as #10 quite a few months ago before I knew about the 48-hour deadline to add another member. Maybe in the next release you can add a line to the confirmation box when you click to pay to create a group, reminding people about this deadline. A lot of newer residents don’t check these forums regularly but still want to create groups.
February 22nd, 2008 at 3:14 AM
I just wish we could reuse names (i.e. leave it reserved to you for a month or so before it falls off the list and becomes fair game for anyone to use).
——————————-
Lisae Boucher, I can support the issue you are talking about, it’s strange.
——————————-
>Raven Primeau Says: I dont personally like Chit chat on group IMs >generally as it constantly interrupts my SL experience closing the >infernal IMs down. Some tough is needed for making RP contacts >etc. As such the groups that seem full of worthless prattle I just >leave. Simple! isnt it?
I thought they were blocking this soon? I think being able to select “Enable chat in groups” for members and roles would be enough. I set up a group JUST for spam, lol.
——————————-
Thanks to all the people who use the external group subscription offerings, I am now in 47 different groups, yay!
*goes back to bed*
February 22nd, 2008 at 3:26 AM
I have a jira open in the disbanding issue - http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-1193
Basically
i) a disbanded group still exists, so disbanding groups with less than 2 members does not free that many resources
ii) this catches out a lot of newbies (as suggested by earlier comments). Therefore, it doesn’t act as a deterrent, and actually can work to the opposite (where someone wonders what happened to their group, and creates a new one).
iii) general advice is to always add an alt to a group as s safety measure (48 hours notice if a group is to be disbanded is little use if it happens whilst you are on holiday for a week, for instance), and with free alts this is easy and cheap to do. If any this adds to the resources as there are probably lots of alts out there whose role is just to be a second group member.
So overall, I question whether this rule still make sense - it may have been a deterrent to creating groups when alts cost money to create, but with free alts it seems a rule which causes more trouble than it actually solves.
On the issue of re-using group names (@18) - as well as the group name, groups are also assigned a group UUID (unique id key). It is the UUID (unique id key) which gets stored as the owner for group owned objects and the client then looks up the group name for that UUID and displays it when you look at an object properties.
Hence it should be possible to re-use a group name but with a new UUID without picking up ownership of any objects which belonged to a group with the same name (but different UUID). A workable solution should be to delete old disbanded groups, and when the client finds an object belonging to a UUID which does not have a group associated with it (i.e. it can’t resolve to a group name), have the client display the group as “disbanded group”, “unknown” or “orphaned” or similar.
Matthew
February 22nd, 2008 at 3:33 AM
@23
When a group is disbanded:
a) if the group contains any members (i.e. the case when it has less than 2), they are kicked out
b) it ceases to be displayed in search
c) it is not possible to join the group (e.g. for open enrollment groups)
A disbanded group still “exists” in that it can still own land and objects, and the name cannot be used by another group.
The land ownership issue is actually quite nasty (I’ve jira’ed this at http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-454): a group can be disbanded due to having too few members whislt it still owns land. Also the last member of a group can leave the group whilst it still owns land.
Matthew
February 22nd, 2008 at 3:56 AM
Using an alt to start a group is ok, but doing it just for the benefits may not be.
I had a problem with my group and logged a support ticket. It was answered immediately and I was very satisfied with the LL response.
I do visit SL during peak hours and crash after about five hours of activity. I am not bragging (well maybe I am), but I just wanted to mention that I use my lag meter and I am always listening to my computer. Lots of clicking and buzzing sounds may tell you how hard it is working.
Refund?? How long did you use the group? Maybe if groups were expensive. The price is already to low.
An option to enable group chat or disable would be good.
I encourage group chat and welcome the opportunity to get to know the members in my group.
I would like to see an option to log group chat when I’m off-line. This would be very helpful in monitoring the chat for members who are abusing group chat.
Any improvements are most welcomed.
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:10 AM
Are Alts Free? O.o
What Happened To The $10 Charge For People Who Already Have Accounts?
Do You Mean To Say “free alts” Are Gained By Circumventing The System?
Can A Linden Comment On The Use Of “free alts” Please?
-.-
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:19 AM
/me sighs at all the whiners
Thank you, Kate!
Very good and timely tip.
Also - some on topic feedback: Thank you, Lindens. for allowing the last member to actually leave the group, rather than forcing them to remain that last two days.
I remember times I wanted to disband a group, and was stuck in the group all by my lonesome (because I wasn’t allowed to leave because I was the last person) for two days. (Frustrating if I needed to group slot LOL)
Also here’s a question that is NOT answered in the knowledge base, that I think is important to know ( and I don’t)…
Jon, Jeremy or Kate:
If a group is disbanded, what happenes to the NAME of that group?
Example: My group is named “Blog Whiners Forever”
By some strange miracle, whiners disappear and only on-topic constructive feedback begins to appear here - so I kick everyone out of the group and leave myself.
Two days later the group goes POOF!
Then the whiners return (I guess they always will be around - sighs)
So I want to RECREATE the group.
Can I use the SAME NAME (”Blog Whiners Forever”) - or must I choose another?
In other words - are the names of disbanded groups released so they can be reused? Or are the locked away forever (the way WordPress locks away a blog name (URL) forever)?
Thanks!
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:25 AM
The system hasn’t actually *allowed* you to pay the $10 fee when creating an alt for nearly a year (in that there is not place to make the payment during the sign-up process).
This *has* been raised with LL a number of times, only to be told that payment is no longer required.
See http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-375
and http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-383
Matthew
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:34 AM
I had a land that I cannot access anymore because the group was disbanded. Bye bye land
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:41 AM
OK, what is going on with credit cards today? Why do you hate mine LL? Anyone else having issues?
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:51 AM
@33:
That is a pretty serious bug, since if your group gets disbanded, you can easily lose access to your own land. Therefore it’s really smart to just own the land yourself and then give rights to specific people as needed, without having a group necessary.
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:05 AM
@33 & @34
Please vote for http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-454
although this was changed from a bug to a feature request as the current behaviour is intentional!
Matthew
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:11 AM
@35: that’d be great — except Azure Islands (and other groups) own lots of sims, and require you to deed the land to a group to access it.
Another solution, please.
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:20 AM
There is a big problem about groups:
If someone takes a group name its lost for everyone else. This seems fairly ok as long the group is used in at least some way.
But it gets really bad if a RL COUNTRY NAME group is disbanded or if the group owner simply turns inactive. In this case the name of a whole country is lost which makes it far harder to form a community for that country. I encounter that problem myself.
Kisses Ice
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:22 AM
Well, using an alt is the only way to be totally safe.
LL doesn’t always give you a warning, I never got one. And yes, the name is taken forever, and can’t be re-enabled (bad) so think carefully before you disband a group.
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:38 AM
48 hours to make a friend! *panics*
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:44 AM
Groups are cool but still would be nice if we could actually allways message our larger groups without trouble …
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:45 AM
P.S. with the knowlege of alts open…
Make a group invite yer ALT !
Your only real friend
February 22nd, 2008 at 7:51 AM
Maybe fewer people would leave groups, endangering their existence, if LL allowed more than 25 groups. This is an amazing ridiculous limitation. I am constantly needing to shuffle my groups around by leaving and rejoining.
There has been a petition circulating for a while to double the group limit…but no word on whether this is going to really be addressed. Any comment, Lindens?
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:09 AM
Hi, Lady Kate Linden.
I know this would be off-topic, but, when do we have more than 25 groups in our profiles?
Best regards.
Rui @ Portugal.
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:39 AM
@31 “In other words - are the names of disbanded groups released so they can be reused? Or are the locked away forever (the way WordPress locks away a blog name (URL) forever)?”
No, they’re not. And what irks me is that I, the creator of the original name, cant create the group anew with the same name. When I search, the name doesn’t come up. When I go to create, it does!
My problem is that it was a group name for my store, and I was just reserving it till I got my store farther along, before inviting anyone…
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:52 AM
I think we all (myself included) have all learned ‘bad habits’ that rely on groups too much. For example: product updates (the majority of our memberships, I’ll bet).
Having ‘only’ 25 groups would be fine, if we all didn’t rely on them for ‘frivolous’ reasons (my word to simply describe “non-essential) reasons. many merchants are now using ‘mailing’ lists to send out update notices. This is a really good idea. The problem is not everyone (merchants) A) knows the ability exists and offers it and B) is willing or able to pay the subscription fees - or buy and set-up the bots to do it.
So, we need to learn a paradigm shift - until LL makes these ‘mail lists’ a feature that will be available to all.
in the mean time, if you deal in land - for any reason, pay attention to any groups associated with it. Yes, I know some of you are experience ‘anomalies’ with this. But the group systems is actually a staple of life in SL. They are -that- important.
So, thank you Kate for posting this tip - it’s a timely tip.
For everyone else with actual problems with groups - bugs and such, you really, really need to put in a support ticket. yes, i know you feel it doesn’t do anything. One way to prove yourselves correct is to not submit the ticket. if you need or want assistance in this - IM me - I’ll be happy to help. But the fact is - if you don’t submit a ticket, then -nothing- will be done at all.
February 22nd, 2008 at 10:47 AM
Names really should be reclaimable if a group is disbanded
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:26 AM
My groups show up fine. My inventory is almost as good, mostly. My friends list is full of people named either
1. Waiting…………………… or
2. Hippo……………………….
If I highlight one of these & click profile I get the profile of a friend. However, since the names are no longer in any way shape or form Alphabetical (freedom comes before drago)
I sometimes get the feeling this isn’t an on going experiment. It’s an ongoing unflammackst, unmitagated disaster.
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:19 PM
for anyone whos friends list dosent show up just untick or tick any one of the permissions boxes for any friend and bang they all appear:)
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:27 PM
Thanks for the info about disbanded groups.
A simple way for a lone person to create or maintain a group would be to use an alt to make a fake second member. My question is: is this allowed? Logically it should not, but…
eventually this situation can arise without intent, if I add one of my alts to my group, and everybody else leaves it.
Note for the naive cheaters: LL always know that an account is an alt of another.
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:33 PM
For those above who complain about too few groups, please vote here http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-767
The idea is that, in order to raise group limits without adding burden to the database, to add simplified group types, using the same code, with just features disabled. For instance just posting notices is fine for many shops or discussion groups where people just want to receive updates or be informed of events.
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:46 PM
I was trying to change some things over and deleted myself from my new group i created but then remembered I had deleted my alt first and so now no one is in the group but i got a notice that i had to add another person to the group or it would be disbanned
We can’t get ourselves back in?
February 22nd, 2008 at 3:26 PM
Wow, that’s great!
Now can someone please explain why we are only allowed to join so many groups? Why are our group lists capped? It seems so restrictive.
February 23rd, 2008 at 6:37 AM
TY Matthew Dowd
Wow…Lots Of “$10 A Pop” Alt Accounts Have Been Waived For Over A Year ?
And Alts Arent Registered?
Very Odd Business Practice Indeed.
But, It Does Explain Why Account Abuse In SL Is So Common…
February 23rd, 2008 at 10:37 AM
well, let us say, I create a group, I have members, and I pay so that the group gets land. Everybody does that.
But one day, I go to holyday, or I am sick, afk for a month, with no email access. During this time, my members leave the group. (or leave SL, or have their account suspended or cancelled…)
When I come back in world, I found my group disbanded, the land lost, and the warning message in my mail…
likely scenario, don’t you think so?
another likely thing is me leaving my group by mistake, with nobody else to add me back…
in such situations, it is much better that I have an alt in the group, with ability to add members.
Yes, but is this allowed? Will this remain allowed in the future??
and if this is allowed, the rule “at least two members” is useless, as any person can create a group alone, and even a 1000 members group with 1000 alts.
Please Lindens, bring some explanations in here, where legitimate use is, and when abuse starts.
February 24th, 2008 at 10:00 AM
Hi everyone! Just stopped by to watch people foam at the mouth and go into an absolute rage over losing roughly 30 cents. Thanks for not disappointing me!
February 26th, 2008 at 5:40 AM
@ 56 - lol if it was so simple
but 30 cents here and 30 cents there soon adds up.
Where i live theres a begger problem, this is because each person giving 50p-£1 to a person every 3-5mins = around £10 an hour wage (minimum wage here is £5.25 i believe)
Using the same basics of economics on this detail to various ’small’ payments t oSL that go missing (not just group creation, but lindens lost in transit between av’s, lindens lost when trying to use a vendor and it gets lost in a system hiccup, etc) $0.30 can soon add up.
Micro-payments systems work simular, except you actually get the end product. This is pure theft.
A freind of mine lost 40K L$ when transfering it between alts, LL just said ’so what?’.
When your main selling point being used is the money you can make it makes a damn huge importance that you get the money management sorted.
February 27th, 2008 at 3:50 PM
wanted an editor or paint for my avatar ?