The History of Group Tool Reform

Finally, in mid 2006, we got the right to make slices of pizza and hand them out without also having to give away the store. Schwanson Schlegel made this photomontage originally to describe something about how simulators put on servers worked.

Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it, and that's why we're repeating the history of Group Tools reform and the bugs that have plagued it. My hypothesis is that it is not about bugs, but about a flaw in design that keeps being reverted due to a political conception; not every bug is a technical screw-up, but is sometimes the embodiment of wrong thinking set to work mechanically with bad results.

I don't view Sean Williams as an honest broker of this issue, nor as a worthy interlocutor, and normally I don't reply to him. But this, my 1,000 post in the history of this blog, has to be explained fully, and argued, for the sake of those uninformed, or still not getting it about the difference between capitalism and communism, and how the former can enable the latter, but the latter cannot enable the former, and therefore when you go about making group tools, you have to ensure diversity of social and economic systems to enable either capitalism or communism, but not switch on only communism.

Back in 2005-2006, a long war was waged to change the group tools. I and a few others led this struggle. We led this struggle because we came into SL in 2004 on the strength of the call from Philip Rosedale that he was ready for business, over beta, and over the sort of opensource hippie technocollectivism that his initial polices and practices and tools promoted. He put in a land auction and parcels. He authorized the conversion of currency. He *encouraged* real estate business in his town hall. He encouraged business of all sorts, despite the howling of some of the old early adopters on the forums. But his group tools didn't catch up with these pledges right away. Under the old regime, there were only two states: officer or member. Either you made everybody everything or you made some one or some the other, but there were devastating consequences. The tools made it possible for anyone who was an officer to take and sell land or deeded objects out from under you, or to trigger an "officers' recall" vote on you, regardless if you had paid for the land and held the tier.

At the time, I wrote this seminal and classic piece, "Imagine if the Pizza Guy Stole LL?" which Cory Linden admitted later did focus his mind on this subject. There was a year of warring on this -- the Lindens convened something like 4 or 6 group meetings, heard all the constituencies, but kept playing to one imaginary one: the purported enthusiastic utopian group that wished to share all proceeds and objects equally. They kept hearing from the furries at Luskwood and the socialists at Neualtenberg that this was vital, and the voices of thousands of other groups that disagreed and wanted management tools and granularity weren't penetrating. Michi Lumin kept demanding the ability to simultaneously make all members owners with never some initial owner -- really brutal and classic communism in the abstract sense which wasn't necessary even to put in the socialist they desired. (BTW, I think in the end, the Lindens accommodated them in another fashion, giving them estate tools on a mainland sim, as if on a private island, or at least, that's what Gwyn says.) One of the hippies driving the communist take on the group tool problems was Daniel Linden, but others were also a problem.

During the beta process of these tools, granulation to enable management of classes of people with hierarchies of privileges was in fact developed. But despite the way the boxes and checkoffs were drawn, certain functions kept bugging up. I tested them rigorously -- although my alt in a group wasn't granted the power to return group-set prims or move group-deeded objects, he could anyway. I kept assiduously reporting this as a flaw and a bug, and *it was fixed*. When the tools launched, this problem ceased. And just as the boxes stated, it worked like this:

PARCEL CONTENT

Return objects owned by group

Return objects set to group

Return non-group objects

Landscaping using Linden plants

OBJECT MANAGEMENT

Deed object to group

Manipulate (move, copy, edit) group-owned objects

Set group-owned objects for sale

Open up the group tools, read these powers under "Abilities" and grasp what granularity means. Combine that with the status boxes on any object:

GENERAL

Share with group

Allow anyone to move

etc.

That meant that the Linden designers who prevailed over the hippie coders created two classes of group ownership:

o share with group, which you could do with an object on mod, but not on transfer
o deed to group which you could do to objects on transfer

They also recognized two sets of powers:

o one role that has the power to move, modify, deed, sell objects and return them even if group set from land
o another role that could *set* a prim to the group but not sell or return group-set objects or deeded objects.

And, in combination with the object menu, the following different states:

o sharing with everybody in SL with "allow anyone to move" or "allow anyone to copy" (beloved by the Lindens in the early days and seldom used fully today, due to griefing)

o sharing with only your group

o sharing with only those members of your group you enabled to access, move, modify, and deed objects.

All this was vital to the rentals industry on the Mainland, as it enabled Mainland rentals to come on par with private islands. On private islands, the function was added in 2006 by the Lindens to have separate parcels, and to be able to deed those parcels to another group than the island owner's group. That was revolutionary, as it meant that you could now sell island parcels or rent them to people who, with the use of their groups, could now control their parcels like officers -- put in ban lists, deed media, paste in a URL, plant, etc.

That utterly changed the landscape of SL society, enabling Anshe Chung's and Adam Zaius' millions and many more tens of thousands  like Desmond's thousands. And it was only fair, with that windfall, that the group tools on the Mainland catch up to this phenomenon, when the private island industry was completely vacuuming out the Mainland, by ending a huge annoyance for Mainland rentals and tenants: the need to summon the manager to deed the TV all the time, constantly, each time a new video was popped in the box or a radio was changed or a stream was changed if there was no radio.

I used to spend hours doing that every day and I did it in order to keep going in the face of intense island superiority. I'm glad I did it, because that's how I got to know a lot of people from all over the world, hear their concerns, and meet their needs in this business.

Finally, with the group tools changed, I no longer had to run around deeding everybody's TV -- or risking griefing by putting objects into share, which was another facet of this problem. In an open group, with this bug, anyone could join the group with the basic role intended only for "set prims" and "set home," but proceed to move around objects, return prims, steal deeded objects, and worst of all, drop malicious scripts in them

Everything was fine with this, but then the bug developed again. Somehow, the political settlement changed, the Linden in charge reverted the cold or didn't keep fixing the flawed routine and let in the "bug", and the ability to have granulation *as the design of the group tools show you with their checkoff boxes" disappeared.

And again, throughout 2006, I had to endure the most appalling griefing as W-hat and and the offshoot groups like V-5, kept griefing me, finding shared objects by scanning them all over sims, and deliberately dropping scripts in them with the Tub Girl or other hideous pictures and self-replicating objects in them. These groups and their griefing activities were constantly defended by Baba and Huns Valens, but finally, Philip directed about 25 or 30 of these recurring criminals to be banned permanently from SL. That was a devastating blow to the leniency that some key beta era favourites like Huns, who made an airplane Philip liked, had enjoyed for ages, as they justified their more obvious griefer friends, and were even photographed victory-dancing with them at times. These furious griefers responded by lobbing 10,000 spam emails into my avatar account, which paralyzed him and my RL email for a week until a special Linden script was designed to fix it. But after that, with the combination of the group tool bug fix, and the Lindens greater policing of replicating objects and griefer tools, and with their renewed sense of purpose brought on my the corporate onslaught of 2007, which had faced a rough patch with the flying penises at Anshe's press conference, finally, peace and prosperity was restored to the land.

People laugh, ridicule me, point the finger, guffaw about tinhats, roll their eyes about communism and invoking Bolshevism. But...it's pretty simple. It *is* what it is about. Those groups, with their Leninist and technocommunist beliefs didn't want business or group collaboration of any sort but their own collectivist vision to prevail on the grid. Some of them merely howled on the forums; others fought fiercely inworld and griefed anyone who took SL seriously using these tools. Their purpose was to defeat the group tools, and to defeat groups.To defeat commerce and collaboration, and to promote sandbox communism and war.

I simply fought back, kept abuse reporting, and kept insisting on getting the bug fixed. It was fixed *again* in 2006-2007 and life returned to normal for a time. Griefing of shared objects ended, stealing of TVs, moving around of objects people had taken out of the library ended (a favourite grief tactic was to take a flamingo on somebody's lawn that they had pulled out of the library, that were clicked out "share with group" (which is how the hippies who originally made the library pre-set everything), and blow it up, or put something obscene in it, or drop self-replicating ugly boxes to spew out of it, etc.

These issues go to the heart of the struggle for Second Life, as in real life: either we have a system that enables diversity of economies and social orders, or we only have one, that kills others, and I think it's worth fighting for the diversity that enables capitalism and communism only for those who wish it, rather than living under forced communism killing off everything, even itself, in crime.

Few who persist in seeing this as my tinhat issue, or persist in seeing this as my special interest Mainland rentals issue, seemed to grasp why these group tools, in their original perfect design and implemented state, benefited many diverse kinds of groups.

Educational groups could put something in share, and enable people to add textures for a PowerPoint or instructional page. Role-play groups could have a core of content makers who could move and change stuff, but not have the visitors disrupt it. Group builds for various celebrations or architectural prototyping projects could thrive. Gadzillion numbers of content businesses were able to use a very popular shared vendor that enabled payouts to be granulated by percentages to certain members. And so on. There were many, many uses, and many people take it for granted, and most people never think about "the Lindens" and "technocommunism" and "Prok harping about capitalism and freedom" when they enjoy all these benefits of the tools.

When the bug came BACK in about March 2008, and I filed a JIRA on it, I saw instantly there was the same problem with the flaw in Linden thinking -- once again, a few technocommunists and hiveminders and wikiculturalists were prevailing with the notion that everybody in a group should do everything and that granularity was evil and hierarchical. They simply saw no logic to it. They saw it as a fussy business or content ask that should be a feature, and not declared a bug -- even though the very boxes in the group proved that in fact that granularity had been designed, and was implemented, and functioned. It was fixed in beta; it was fixed once before; and lo and behold, it is now declared CRITICAL and being fixed *again* -- at least until the next hippie or commie comes along to undo it again.

So to go over the fine points:

Group-set and group-deeded are different, but it's merely the function of transfer/no transfer on the object. If an object is not transferable, you can still put it in "share" and have it modded and moved by others, but they can't put it into inventory or sell it to themselves or deed it.

No, there is no such thing as what Sean claims as "the group ownership system" and "the individual owner system".

I can have an object that I personally retain ownership of, and I check it off on "share" to enable others to use it, but not swipe, sell, destroy it.

I can have an object that I *deed* and remove my individual ownership, and then the group owns it. But that's why I want only certain roles with certain abilities to access it, say, if it is an object paying out money, or is a music stream changer that I don't want random visitors to just grab and change. And that's why it exists.

My JIRA is the report of a bug; it is an old bug fixed in beta; it is a bug fixed in 2006 and 2007; the tools worked differently -- as designed -- for long stretches -- and the bug came back.

It is not about changing

The system works now in such a way that you need to put an object in "share" first before deeding it. And that is as is should be. There are things I'd like to share. Let's say objects that I might want staff to move on to and off a dance floor, a stage, whatever. Then there are objects I'd like to have people deed on their own with that power, like media. Moving and editing a thing isn't the same as ownership, obviously, it's just *use*.

In fact, my efforts at reform enabled more collaboration, more rich and granulated forms of people sharing things, rather than the dead hand of absolutist collectivism, that is put in when you force a yes/no decision tree of "either mine, or I deed it to the group". "Either I keep private property, or I give it up entirely for the use of the commune". And that's just plain retarded. Even socialists don't want their music streams changed by every casual visitor.

The solution is simply to *put it back the way it was* guided by *the way the design can be clearly seen already*. Proof of this is seen in the boxes themselves; the boxes indicate and prove that there were granulated powers, and they once worked this way.

That's why Sean's babbling about how this or that thing should be done to turn all the functions on their ear is ridiculous. The design stands, it is visible in the boxes.

You certainly don't want a system where a creator of every single prim has to make a judgement about every single prim in his 15,0000 build, or his furniture for sale, or his gadget, has to get a decision about whether it goes to a group ownership or not. Blue pop-up menus for that would be disastrous and supremely retarded.

Far more practical is simply making the group tool decisions of who gets what role, and all objects then get generated in that fashion under those overarching rules.

And no drop-downs or additional boxes or changes are needed to have a group owner decide how he wants things. He has that already. He can be a hippie, and check off everything open to everybody and make everyone an owner as well, or he can granulate the roles to enable increasingly lenient access and higher powers to manage his rentals, educational build, club, RP, non-profit, whatever. Diversity.

All of this was hashed out at the time, in blogs like this one by Tiger Crossing, who suddenly appeared to try to manage a more complexly technical solution simply because she found it fascinating to do tekkie-wiki crap in SL, not because she had a practical need for any groups.

Why are these struggles so hard? why do these "bugs" keep appearing, and why is it so hard to get common sense and reason to prevail in Second Life?

Because there is war in heaven. One set of Lindens against another. One set of residents against another. And the ideologies they fight over are indeed technocommunism and techocapitalism. Indeed, it comes down to whether you want diversity, pluralism, and liberalism, or uniformity, collectivism, and rigid orthodoxy.

Comments

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

... or perhaps it's just because getting it right is insanely hard to do, and due to LL's server design, changing one line of code will bump bugs all over the place and break permissions there...

That doesn't mean you're not right. Because you are!

[Prokofy]

Well, what do YOU think made them suddenly call this "Critical" and say they were "working on it" and going to "fix" it? Is this from some big corporation? Some big developer? Or? What?!

[Charity Colville]

Prok, I have to say, I would probably agree with you more often if I didn't get lost reading. If you would stop pontificating and start writing in a way that the rest of us dumbasses could follow, I'd kiss ya :)

[Prokofy]

I write as I please, by the light of my conscience.

I'm not here to spoon feed you little predigested bits as big as your hand like the rest of the Internet.

You might want to pick up a copy of Reader's Digest at the supermarket and turn to the section called "It Pays to Increase Your Word Power".

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

That said, the would-be reader will find the occasional hapax legomenon and some words used in ways not elsewhere seen (e.g. "neuralgia" used where "neurosis" is probably meant).

[Prokofy]

No, "neuralgia" is exactly that word which describes that phantom limb pain online that only a pixelated avatar being could feel in a virtual world, where in principle nothing should give him any sensation.

[Ariadne Korda]

I too would probably be more interested in what you have to say if you weren't quite so wordy. And yes, thanks, I do understand the words. There are just too many of them. It's a case of 'can't see the forest for the trees'.

And yes, I know you'll reply by one of the 'it's my blog and you're stupid' kind of retorts. That's par for the course too.

But how about rising above your self-importance and verbosity and catering to those who want a clear message now and then? That way, a few more people might actually agree with some of the issues you're fighting for.

And yes, I expect you'll reply on the lines of 'I don't care about the ignorant ones'. But it's not ignorance, but often about sheer boredom. It's a case of having to plough through a mass of extraneous stuff and repetition in order to get to the point.

If you are indeed trying to cater to the diversity that is the SL world, then I would respectfully suggest you cut some of the crap, the sneering, the conclusion-jumping about people who dare state their opinion - and the rambling.

To slide into Prok-speak, you say you want diversity, pluralism and liberalism... but by your pompous, over-complex, confusing diatribes you are in fact alienating those who have the same concerns.

In a word, you're boring as hell. And yes, you can say 'then don't read'. Don't worry - I mostly don't. This time I was interested in the group issues but I had to find the information among the babbling. Who cares whether you think a Linden is a hippie or whether Sean 'babbles'? YOU babble!

If you're really such a dedicated campaigner for so many things, then maybe it's worth considering that the thought leaders who are remembered are those who got their point across to the masses, who they treated with respect - in all their diversity. That very diversity you claim to support.

But it would seem you are more interested in being seen as a wordy joke.

[Sean Williams]

Prokofy, the way you want this done can and WILL REMOVE the ownership rights and abilities of the individual avatar who has decided to allow ANY group of THEIR choosing to use an object they DO NOT own and thus have NO say in the permissions nor who gets to use it.

You are full of nothing more than bullshit and hypocrisy ... Had anyone else filed a similar entry into the JIRA you would be blathering on and on about how the rights of the individual were being violated.

Your proposal is no different and to boot as presently worded IS a direct stab at REMOVING power from the object Owner WITHOUT having them deed the object over to a specific Group.

Try going back over and actually READING what is written: Until such a time as you have DEEDED an object to a Group 'Share with Group' should NOT be affected by the Group Permissions. An individual Avatar owns the object and thus all permission choices within the system should rightly rest with that individual.

I have NO problem with GROUP OWNED objects being affected by your JIRA proposal Prok: I have EVERY problem with the current way it is worded! 'Grtoup-set' prims, in a link set or not, are NOT DEEDED to the Group: The Group has no say in the matter of who uses the item or parts of the item nor should they ever.

You want to fix a bug with the way GROUP OWNED objects are handled? Fine with me: Actually word it that way and you won't have any problems with people looking at the issue and thinking that you're trying to alter the entire system.

Oh ... and yes, there IS an individual ownership system and a group ownership system Prokofy: As long as an object is owned by an individual Avatar, the only restriction placed on what can be done to or with that object is the permission system and whatever else may be in the object.

Deed an object to a group however and now there is a new set of permissions affecting what you can and cannot do with the object that you used to own.

I did not claim that these systems are independent, they do exist however or the server would have no idea how to handle object permissions in either case.

Once again, and this time I'll write it so that you can actually understand it: In nice, small words and big letters ...

I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH A BUG IN THE WAY GROUP OWNED OBJECTS ARE HANDLED BEING FIXED. MY PROBLEM IS WITH THE CURRENT PHRASING OF THE ISSUE SEEMING TO TARGET OBJECTS OWNED BY A SINGLE AVATAR AND SET TO ALLOW WHICHEVER GROUP THEY CHOOSE TO BE ALLOWED TO USE IT. IN THAT INSTANCE, NO ONE GROUP SHOULD EVER BE ABLE TO DECIDE FOR THE OBJECT OWNER WHO CAN AND CANNOT USE THE OBJECT. I HAVE SUGGESTED NO 'BLUE DROP DOWN DIALOG' ... I HAVE SUGGESTED ADDITIONAL OPTIONS TO ALLOW AN INDIVIDUAL AVATAR THE SAME ABILITY AS A GROUP WITHOUT TURNING OVER OWNERSHIP OF THE ITEM OR LOSING THEIR OWN PERMISSIONS/ABILITIES.

Any response other than "Oh, THAT'S what you meant" or "Gee, I didn't know it was worded that way" will just show that you cannot read and comprehend simple English.

I am frankly getting sick and tired of pointing out to you your own failure to communicate what you want properly: I can see here that you ARE talking about group OWNED objects ... but your own JIRA entry does not state that.

That is what is called a failure to communicate.

[Prokofy Neva]

I don't *care* if there are too many words, Ariadne. Deal with it. These issues are complex, and take awhile to explain. I explain them thoroughly, and intelligently -- and your level of intelligence can't rise to them. *Grow up*. Write your own blog better. Learn that the world doesn't consist of the bite-size pieces of text that your hippie teachers gave you in school.

There are other bloggers like Gwyneth Llewelyn and Dusan Writer who even write posts just as long -- in fact longer than mines! -- but no one ever objects because they agree with what they say. You don't agree with what I say, so even one paragraph is too long. I'm well familiar with this.

No, I don't cater to attention-challenged asses who don't agree with me? You're not *required* to read this blog. I'm not paid to write it, and you don't pay me.

My proposal is a *bug find* that reports *how tools used to work, as the Lindens reformed them, and changed their design to work differently -- until the bug cropped up again.

I have to stare in absolute amazement that you opensource commie freaks would be objecting to an SL principle here that preceded this bug find, preceded the group tools and is at the heart of SL: namely, that you can take an object that is yours and DEED IT TO A GROUP so that it is no longer yours. That is, CHANGE its ownership from individual to group.

It just fucking boggles the mind that you commies would start objecting to this -- but I've seen it before.

I mean, surely you realize what fucking assholes you look like somehow growing indignant and stupidly obdurate about this.

Uh, no, duh, when you take something you own, and give it to a group, you can't retain its ownership. You can sell it back to yourself, but then...so can anyone else with those powers. Hey, the magic of the hippie commune.

If you don't want to donate land or an object to the group, then...don't? Or...juts put it in share or "anyone can move" but retain possession of it?

It's precisely that function to *change ownership from private to public* -- built into the core of SL by the Lindens who believe ardently in collaboration and cooperation online -- that I and others -- and Lindens themselves, eventually, wished to mitigate.

It's like group land. You deed it to the group? It's gone. There's nothing in the system to prove that it was once yours and you should get it back because only you pay tier, for example. You can't take it back unless you have the power to sell it back to yourself. So better make only yourself and the most trusted person you know the officers with those powers or it can and will be swiped out from under you by rogue officers. Tales of such rogues littered the forums in SL until they got rid of this coerced and automatic function some years ago.

Now you can chose.

I'm a good corrective to the raging assholes who constantly bang on everyone and demand coercion and only one form of property, not respecting private property and property rights, i.e. that one person who pays tier shouldn't be stuck giving the land they paid for to the entire group, or that one person who pays rent and buys a TV should turn it over to every passerby with a lesser function in that group who doesn't, under the tools, even have the checkoff box to even be able to access that object.

I don't care if carefully and methodically laying out the problems with these issues, and analyzing them as to their political content bothers you and seems like babbling. Too fucking bad. Find some other blog that says it better for you, and stop trying to coerce me into changing into the way you feel I "should" be.

Sean is once again a raging tool -- and an obdurately stupid one. The ability to change an object form "mine" to "ours" isn't "communism" and "loss of property rights" *when you have tools that enables you to make choices about who the "ours" are*. That is everything; that changes the Lindens' communism to Second Life collaboration which is better than collectivism because it isn't coerced.

If the city puts out a park bench for everyone to use, using everyone's tax dollars, they want to enable it to stay open to use, and not be stolen or vandalized. With the rule of law -- i.e. punishing graffiti artists or thieves -- they establish the limits on public property. That's what good group tool rules are -- the rule of law preventing communality from becoming communism, and becoming crime.

That vandalism always happens when you cannot protect property rights with public property is self-evident in every city of the world.

Who says there aren't separate permission systems? Of course there are. There have to be if you want a virtual world of collaboration. But proof of just how fucked this is comes with a known problem: that when a non-transferable deeded object is returned from group land, it is destroyed.

Destroyed. Gone. You can't get it back. It's not in the trash. That's how the system deals with this "Marxist internal contradiction".

Why? Because the server, unlike the hippies in the group, doesn't know who once owned it, and to whom to return it to in inventory. And faced with that horrible contradiction between private and public property, it simply blows it up -- it destroys the object.

Only if the object is transferable will it go back (now) to its original owner (but that was an add-on later, it didn't start out that way).

Thanks to some of us lobbying some years ago, the system now at least warns you that this is going to happen -- it will destroy upon return.

The system doesn't have a way of marking and remembering the original owner and returning it to him -- and how could it? (That's not technically feasible or practical, the database calls and pathways would be humongous).

If he deeded the object (as distinct from merely putting it in share) then he passed it to the entire group to access. That's life in the big city. Don't take stuff out of your inventory and share it if you are such an ass that you can't grasp that.

Of course a group should decide how a *group* object should be used -- if all the people in the group are checked off by the original framers -- the founders -- to access this, then that's how it is. That's Second Life. That's normal collaboration. That's why this bug is being reported, so that people NOT checked off to share or deed can't grab it and sell it. Period.

People NOT checked off -- decided by the founder and owners and officers -- to access an object CANNOT get at it. That's how it WAS; that's how it SHOULD BE. Pretending that the group nature of the object is the problem, and not the failure to make restrictive checkofss the problem just illustrates the fundamental flaw at the heart of the communist mind.

We get a fascinating window here into the communist open-source mind -- a manifestation that I couldn't make up better myself. Communists so often devolve to a scenario where one stubborn and hegemonic individual is madly demanding individual property rights against the group, in the belief that he represents the group and knows better, despite the rules of a clear collaborative system, in this case, technocommunism.

They are big boosters for opensource groups, anyone enters, anyone codes, everyone changes, everyone grabs the code...until they don't like it. When it served their overweening ego, when the group was the amplification of that ego, they loved the group. The minute it turns on them or its individuals assert their rights, it has to die.

That's because the communist mind exploits the group and the idealism to work together, and often enables one or two or three core people to take over everything still hiding behind the group idealism.

Then, they rebel and scream and suddenly freak out that their collective object isn't "theirs". Isn't going the way *they* want. Then they either a) fork off, privileging their individual notions over the group or b) expel and kill off dissenters and c) sabotage the group or steal things.

That's why communism always ends badly with crime and dictatorships. Because it's based on the Big Lie that people really wish to merge their identities and properties into the group. But...they don't, ultimately. They want to share, not be collectivized.

I never dreamed that a mechanistic toy designed by hippie coders in California in the early 2000s would better teach the lessons of communism of the previous century than any textbook, in 3-D, in living colour. I didn't realize, going into it, that it would teach the lockstep laws of communism better than real life.

[Sean Williams]

Thank you for proving that you cannot read nor comprehend what is being said.

I'll repeat it until it sinks into your thick skull:

I HAVE NO PROBLEM FIXING A BUG WITH THE WAY A GROUP OWNED OBJECT IS HANDLED. MY PROBLEM IS THAT THE WAY YOUR PROPOSAL IS WORDED IT WOULD AFFECT OBJECTS NOT OWNED BY THE GOD DAMN GROUP!

UNTIL THE OBJECT IS DEEDED/OWNED BY A GROUP THE GROUP DOES NOT NEED TO HAVE ANY SAY IN WHO CAN USE OR ALTER AN OBJECT! THAT SHOULD REST WITH WHOMEVER OWNS THE OBJECT!

SET AN OBJECT AS SHARE WITH GROUP WITHOUT DEEDING IT TO A GROUP AND THE GROUP SHOULD HAVE NO SAY IN THE MATTER OF WHO CAN USE OR ALTER THE OBJECT AS THE OBJECT IS NOT YET OWNED BY THE GROUP.

by the by, the system DOES remember who last owned a Group Owned object: An object accidentally deeded to a Group can be Returned and it will go to the person who deeded it.

Try actually fucking reading what is being said next time.

[Prokofy Neva]

MY PROBLEM IS THAT THE WAY YOUR PROPOSAL IS WORDED IT WOULD AFFECT OBJECTS NOT OWNED BY THE GOD DAMN GROUP!

No, idiot, there isn't anything like that. My "proposal" which isn't "my proposal" but *the way the tools used to work as designed properly by the Lindens* -- duh -- does nothing of the kind.

You are such a fucking comprehension-challenged retard, Sean, truly, see a doctor about your impaired cognition.

"Share" with group only lets the group, um, *share*. Like, move it around. Or texture it if is is on modify. Share is a precursor step to deed. Obviously, you've never run a group or you'd get this.

When the group works properly without bugs, as it did for a year, only those group members who are SUPPOSED to get access to an object will. But with the bug, they gain access.

They aren't checked off to be able to do anything with deeded, group-owned objects, yet they can -- i.e. return them, sell them, etc. -- even if their role is not authorized for that. That's the whole goddamn point.

Of course, if you put a group into "share", um, "share" means, uh.....wait for it! -- DRUMROLL -- SHARE. So the group has a say UP TO A POINT, i.e. they can SHARE but not do other things (if it is working correctly).

Share is share. It means the group *officers* with those *powers* can deed it or sell it. Sooooooo don't make a group with officers other than yourself with those powers. And get the Lindens to fix this BUG.

No. The system DOES NOT remember who once owned an object **UNLESS** it is transferrable. And I explained that. If it is not transferable, it doesn't. And this was not always the case -- I explained the history -- it used to return everything, regardless. After a lot of complaining about deeded rentals tenants' TVs being destroyed when they didn't pay their rent and their prims were returned, the Lindens finally did something about this.

Try actually working with a fucking group Sean before you spout nonsense.

[Sean Williams]

I do work with groups you worthless twit.

Let's take a look at the very TITLE of your JIRA entry: "Group Members Not Enabled to Do So Can Return Group-Set Linked Prims if Any Component is in Share With Group"

Notice something there?

"Group-set", not "Group-Owned".

Did you actually read my comment in your other blog entry explaining the meaning, implied or actual, of "Group-set"?

Apparently not.

Do yourself a favor next time and SHUT THE FUCK UP, TAKE A STEP BACK AND ACTUALLY THINK before you type up one of your meaningless responses.

Christ, I'd correct the fucking thing myself if it were not for the fact that you'd pitch a fucking fit.

[Sean Williams]

Fuck it - it's been fixed so no further communication issues ensue.

That's all you had to fucking do too .. change one god damn word.

[Ariadne Korda]

"These issues are complex, and take awhile to explain. I explain them thoroughly, and intelligently -- and your level of intelligence can't rise to them."

Wanna bet? Love these sweeping statements. Not. There is a world of difference between 'thoroughly' and babbling. You babble. YOu ramble. You are BORING.

*Grow up*.

I did. Prove otherwise, in less than 1,000 words.

"Write your own blog better. Learn that the world doesn't consist of the bite-size pieces of text that your hippie teachers gave you in school."

Boring repetition, followed by more of same. Paragraphs and paragraphs of it, which I didn't read.

And why thank you for reading my blog - I am deeply, deeply grateful (/sarcasm). My teachers were hippies? You sure?

Prok, you have great ideas sometimes. But if you want to influence people (which you clearly do), try - just once - that really *intelligent* thing called listening to others rather than ranting at them.

But thanks for the amusement. You are indeed talented - at stirring shit. In too many words. And it doesn't take that much 'intelligence' to see that.

[Prokofy Neva]

No, Sean is incorrect again. He's incorrect because he keeps thinking that "share" is "group-owned" or he is mistaking the two-set process to deed which first includes "share".

Group-owned is not share. Group-owned is deeded.

I've gone and re-tested it all again, and sure enough, WHEN an object is in SHARE (which is not group "owned" but merely SHARED like it says), tenants not invested with the power to return group-SET prims (which these are) are able to return group-SET prims WHEN THEY ARE IN SHARE.

They can't access -- and return -- group DEEDED, i.e. group OWNED prims -- but they did for a time with another bug, which isn't the subject of this JIRA at all.

It's also the case that it only takes one prim in SHARE mistakenly to infect an entire build where the rest is in NO SHARE. End of story. This is obvious if you test; I've run it through twice, stop being an ass.

I've changed Solar Legion's redaction as it is incorrect.

If I'm boring, Ariadne, er, move along, and go fuck yourself? Honestly, I can't help you.

Er, did you have a blog? I haven't seen it. It sounds dull tho. But, move along and post there if you are more fascinated with yourself than this discussion lol.

I don't attempt to influence people the way YOU say I should. I honestly do not give a good flying fuck with what you or what anyone else says about style, content, length, tone, whatever. You really can all go fuck yourselves.

I am not concerned, really with "trying to be effective" like some suck-up conformist -- like Desmond and Dusan and Gwy, for example, all of whom worry excessively about "what people think" and "how I should appear to the community" and "how I should say this effectively" -- and trim their sails accordingly.

I don't do that. And never will.

I will not be "listening to" people who are of mediocre or sub-par intelligence who have nothing interesting to say, except to come up like total retards and begin picking at style, content, tone, delivery, spelling, whateve. It is truly the mark of inferior intelligence.

So again - fuck you : )

[Sean Williams]

Let's go over this one more time shall we, since you still seem to be stuck in idiot mode:

Group Roles/Permissions do NOT affect an object that is not OWNED or DEEDED to the Group.

At present there is NO restriction within Groups which would even allow this, the options under Object Management are as follows (taken from a Group I founded by the by):

1. Deed objects to group
2. Manipulate (move, copy, modify) group-owned objects
3. Set group-owned objects for sale

Notice what is not there?

The only option that can possibly be broken is the ability to return Group-set objects.

There is however no flag affecting Group-set and shared objects.

Now then, I can see this as a problem, however I can also see other issues that may arise if the Lindens do not fix the code in the proper manner.

It may be possible that the 'share' check box has been coded currently to allow near ownership status, negating the group restrictions.

Personally I'd rather they not screw with the system ... they might screw something else up.

In the future Prokofy, unless I have said something directly do NOT attempt to state what I am saying in any manner: I never said anywhere that Group Owned equated out to the share box.

Learn to read and comprehend in the future: My concern has been over simple wording and an alteration to a system which might result in further issues, like an object being treated with full group restrictions when it should not be.

Call me a pessimist when it comes to the Lindens fixing code.

[Prokofy Neva]

Sure, one more time, with the facts AGAIN:

>Group Roles/Permissions do NOT affect an object that is not OWNED or DEEDED to the Group.

Yes they do. They affect:

o non-group prims
o group-SET prims
o group-DEEDED prims
o group-SHARED prims

There are granulated roles for these functions and these operations.

Look at the other menu, dumbass, where you can see

RETURN group set or not group set.

THAT is where it becomes relevant -- duh.

A prim in group SHARE is a group SET prim.;

A tenant who does not have the right to return group SET prims can return them when in SHARE.

Again, notice what is there?

RETURN group-SET or not-group-set prims.

The flag affecting group SET objects applies to group SHARED because they are group SET in order to be SHARED -- DER.

Most relevant to all this:

o it was a problem in beta
o it was fixed for final release
o it didn't stay a problem for a year but functioned normally
o it became a problem again -- was fixed
o became a problem -- and hung

that is the history.

The coding in the share function hasn't respected the fact that SET is precursor to SHARE and that SET has a set of functions tied to roles. Some screw is loose there, that's all. And they didn't fix it because a) they were ideological about it and stubborn and b) fixing it may have had other repercussions they couldn't redo without headaches.

Throughout this discussion, Sean, you continuously confused group ownership, as the public record shows. And in the future, I suggest you kindly fuck yourself in advance, and stay off my blog. You are not welcome. I will not be talking to you.

No system will threaten your BDSM lifestyle, your coding arrogance, your whatever it is you need to have with utter absolute control over objects and land -- don't worry.

Objects put in share are um, shared. But...they shouldn't be able to be sent back from group land because they are group-SET before SHARE.

The Lindens acknowledged at least one piece of this, but I'm waiting to see if they get the larger issue here. Not sure.

[Sean Williams]

I see you failed to read the entire comment again.

Do yourself a favor and don't respond again until you have read the entire comment and comprehended it ok?

I don't give a rat's ass about the 'history' of it: It is irrelevant.

I also see you have FAILED to find exactly where I have stated ANYTHING AT ALL that shows a 'confusion of group ownership'.

How about you take your keyboard and shove it up your ass Prokofy? I'm quite sure you'd see no reduction in your ability to type out utter bullshit.

Now then, take your little attitude problem, along with your need to make up 'facts' about people and FUCK OFF you worthless piece of human waste.

Here is the part of my comment you MISSED asshole - READ IT and SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY, I'M FUCKING AGREEING WITH YOU!

"The only option that can possibly be broken is the ability to return Group-set objects.

There is however no flag affecting Group-set and shared objects.

Now then, I can see this as a problem, however I can also see other issues that may arise if the Lindens do not fix the code in the proper manner.

It may be possible that the 'share' check box has been coded currently to allow near ownership status, negating the group restrictions.

Personally I'd rather they not screw with the system ... they might screw something else up."

[Prokofy Neva]

No, you're not agreeing, and you're being an asshole -- no surprise there.

Re: "The only option that can possibly be broken is the ability to return Group-set objects."

No, that's not what is broken. What is broken is the RESTRICTION on that ability in the ROLES.

The problem is that roles NOT given the right to return group SET objects CAN return them when they are in SHARE. You keep missing that sequence of points.

R: "There is however no flag affecting Group-set and shared objects."

It is not clear whether this comes in a flag for both, or it comes in a permissions for one, so unless Lindens explain what they were doing and what they will fix, I can't tell.