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Dzonatas Sol - 18/May/07 11:02 AM
More groups could mean more network traffic. The limit was raised half year ago to 25. There is already network issues with that many groups. Don't expect more groups any time soon.
If network traffic is the issue, it would be nice to see an increase in the group limit, for premium accounts only.
More premium incentive is always good I agree with WarKirby. I find that 25 groups is two few for me since I'm involved in building, animation, scripting, and then there are product groups that you need to be in to get the updates. With so much functionality around the group system it should be expanded to allow users to participate in more groups. The fix is easy from a technical standpoint of just altering the group limit. However as Dzonatas has pointed out there is a "day-day" result of more network traffic. Therefore since the increased traffic would require LL to possibly add more bandwith or other technology then the larger group cap should be allowed only on premium accounts so the cost is offset.
I am elaborating more for the convenience of the linden that reviews this so it can be implemented as easily as possible. Here here! That limit drives me nuts. I do a number of different RP groups so I need the announcements plus I'm in the usual product groups and stuff. I'm already premium so that works for me. I don't mind paying for more features.
I create a separate group for each mainland rental group so my tenants can terraform the land, set the ban lists, eject griefers, change media settings, etc, but I keep running out of groups. I have to move rental groups to alt characters, but even they hit 25 group maximum. Now that LL has cut off the ability to create alts, the situation looks grim.
I would gladly pay to hold more groups. New types of "membership entities" could be created , types that wouldn't take as much space to store as the current SL style group because they are created to serve a smaller list of functions.
Current groups have to store a bunch of data on who is in what role, what the roles are, what the abilities are, etc. As one example of such a limited purpose membership entity, a chatstream membership entity could have one or two ranks of officer, with one ability, to expel and ban members. No need to store anything about group land because the group wouldn't be able to own land, no need to store any data about group funds because the group wouldn't be able to engage in any financial transactions. The only thing the group would be for would be to chat. Such a group would be fine for product announcements. Chat for such groups would be sent through a different means than normal group chat is sent. Possibly the chat would actually be done by a server provided by the group, leaving SL servers free from the burden of transmitting the chat text. Something along the lines of an IRC channel, displayed in a in-viewer mozilla browser window, or from a normal web browser or IRC client. Individuals belong to many more that 25 sets, and the sets they belong to aren't all the same type of set. LL needs to figure out some way to deal with this fact and represent our belonging to many different sets of different types in SL. its important for merchants in SL to be in groups belonging to the location they
have vendors at, for a few reasons two being to update their vendors when the land is set on no build / auto return is on so they have to set objects to group and also to keep updated on information from who they rent the vendor spots from like rent increases special, Sim info etc. for people that have vendors in many differnt sims like myself and most of them needing you to be in a group 25 isnt nearly enough, im constantly dropping groups to join new ones I would like to see at least the opportunity for 50 group memberships. Some of my groups rarely have announcements but the ones I do receive are important. For example, the SL Riding Club has infrequent announcements. Then other groups have frequent chatter. My group memberships have a nice balance for me. But, with my SL work, education and business groups, there is little room left in my "group space" for fun things. I have dropped at least 25 groups that were not often busy but important to me for their occasional meetings. I am already a premium member and think LL could offer more group space as an incentive to join. Perhaps rather than charge us more for additional group space, they could limit the non paying members to less groups.
Please raise this limit... groups for island management and business eat up several of those 25 already, and there is not much space for more groups like product update groups or fun groups.
LL was asked to increase groups to 100 to 200 when this issue was first raised more than a year ago. They knew the needs at that time, they had people begging for more. They capped it at 25. Like you, I would love to see at least 100 groups. I don't know why a user having extra groups would cause problems with the network (but I don't know everything). Having worked with computer databases for mumblety-mumble years, with the sole exception of space requirements, it's just as easy to have a database of 500 items as 5 items. So I have no idea why they capped it at 25, but I would hope they had a good reason rather than just choosing that as an arbitrary number. Because 100 or 200 would have been much more useful. The point made about merchants needing groups was probably the most valid point of all. If SL is going to have a finance foundation, merchants need to have the tools needed to operate.
100 or 200 would be wonderful. Groups are used for at least three purposes: access control, announcements, and group chat. Being able to belong to only 25 groups for all three of these purposes combined is horribly painful; I'm constantly having to grit my teeth and leave a group that I really really want to belong to, because I need to join some other one slightly more.
i feel perhaps there should be 2 types of groups. As was mentioned -- group access, and then social/discussion. Many groups are there solely for the purpose of land management/group access. These could be set up with NO group IM's, and the only "discussion" is sending out notices (i.e. when a yard sale clears out their land, store product group can send out announcements of their new items, and membership groups can send out new rules sheets).
this would leave a LOT of room for other types of groups, then. Social groups, and discussion groups. My Vote is in.... Three years in SL and I have to "delete" a group everytime I have to join another. It is ridiculous!!!. Now, SL is bigger.. we all buy more and more land and make more and more businesses... There is never enough group space. Please give up a no limit group, or 100 at least. I cannot be in any social group cause there is no space. Please, Lindens, listen to us, listen to what we need.
The old argument about group limits tied to both "network" and "database issues" went as follows:
Imagine that you're walking across the landscape. At each pixel you move, the system has to check the following: - if you're entering a parcel that is limited to a specific group, and you're in that group, and have an appropriate role - if you're being 'sensed' by a device that only works for group members This happens for every pixel you walk. Now apparently this causes a huge load on the database. Notice that my description is probably very unaccurate, since the system very likely caches locally all group information for all parcels and objects in that sim. Still, all movement needs to look group membership up "all the time". On top of that, group membership (specially in the large groups) mean that every time an IM is sent to a group chat, the system needs to check who is in that group and who is online, to set up the proper communications to the correct avatars. So this is an extra order of complexity. Now, SL has evolved, and maybe the system is not so "constrained" any more, but this was the reason given when the group number changed from 10 to 15, and later to 25: basically, it's not so easy as wayfinder tends to infer, and yes, under the *current* implementation, 5 or 500 groups makes a HUGE difference (since the required computation does not rise linearly, but exponentially...). On the other hand, SuezanneC has brought up the old argument we always had: make groups simpler, eg. "spam groups" that will give you a title, but not ownership of either objects and/or land. They'd be simply used to keep in touch with people — and could in theory be unlimited in number! Fpr me, 25 groups would probably be sufficient if I didnt need to join merchant groups in order to place vendors in malls. If there were another way for mall owners to manage prims on their land, perhaps an LSL function that allows a land owner or group member to delete objects by prim owner, or a land tools function that allowed building by a list of names in addition to group membership similar to allow/ban lists we have now, could mitigate part of the problem. Otherwise, please increase the number!
Since the call for extra groups seems to be coming from people that are already involved financially with LL in some way (renting, vending etc) then it would be unfair to make any restriction based on charges.
Right now, just upping it to 35 or 40 would be a great help. 25 is not enough groups when you have multiple jobs and lots of friends like I do.I have made business choices based on the fact that I didn't want to use a group slot... for example today I passed up the chance to rent a mall spot primarily because I wasn't excited enough to drop out of another group to join their group. In other words, the lack of a handy free group slot was a bigger consideration than the rent when deciding whether or not to risk taking a space at a (pretty nice) new mall.
500 wd be too many...but it shd be at least 3 or 4 dozen rather than 2 dozen. @Solomon Draken, re: giving premium accounts a higher group limit
Interesting idea to allow premium accounts a higher group limit. One could make a strong case for this, given that: 1) We business owners are currently paying SL a LOT more than the average day old newbie account (tier fees, LindeX fees, etc), yet we don't get a higher group limit. 2) We need the higher group limit for our businesses. Businesses which both create much of the content in Second Life and also help draw in new users (thus bringing money to LL). 3) Having a higher group limit for premium accounts would be a benefit which encouraged people to go premium and make monthly payments to Linden Lab. @SuezanneC Baskerville, re: creation of simpler group-like entities which cause less DB load Great idea! Most groups are not used for land-related tasks. Rather, they are used for group chat and notices, as well as the odd title. Why not have a simpler, group-like structure which omits the functions that most groups don't use, and thereby, takes up less database/network resources? It could be called an "association" or something similar. Converting groups which don't use land/L$ functions into "associations" could save server resources, thus providing the free capacity for us to be members of more groups/associations. In particular : * Association memberships would not be checked when determining access permissions on parcels * Associations would not be able to take L$ from their members, or be paid L$. It could all be seamless to the user, as well: * All groups, when first created, start off as associations. The group creator is charged only L$50 to create an association. * Full Groups are converted to Associations when they have had no L$ activity for the last month, and do not have any land set or deeded to them. * Associations are converted to full groups when land is set or deeded to them, or when an object is deeded to them. Converting an association into a full group costs the person who does it L$50. The potential problems I see with this idea are : * Many people create groups to have a variety of titles. Associations wouldn't be useful for this unless they had as many roles as full groups (just without the land management role powers). * Group notices are used in almost all active groups. So associations would probably need the power to send group notices. Just having "can invite to group" as group role permissions for associations probably isn't enough. * Both full groups and associations would need to keep the role powers for "can start group IM session" and "can reply to existing group IM session", when these are put in place. If associations are designed primarily for chat purposes, they need whatever features are going to be put in place to help counteract spam. What we really need is a developer Linden to look at this and see if this would help address some of the problems of server load caused by groups. If I could convert half my groups to associations, thus freeing up that number of slots for full groups, I'd be happy :) Agree. Voted.
As for the argument that it causes too much load, I cant see how. I guess it really depends on the behind the scenes architecture (which we all know needs an overhaul (again) anyway. Using the above example of having to check your access every pixel, I cant see why a single SQL query couldnt retrieve the appropriate data and comapre access levels - its not like you have to do (a broad example) if-else-if-else type coding to explicitly list and check each individual group that the user is a member of. If its not done in an efficient way, it really needs to be changed so that it is - regardless of whether that change enables us to have more groups or not. The problem here is that LL have a 4 year old platform which is rapidly aging, but they seem hesitant to change anything that is part of the underlying core for fear that it will suddenly stop working. That attitude needs to change. I like the idea of separating groups into access and social... if I could convert some of my access-only groups so that they could not receive instant messages (read spam) I would do so in an eye-blink. as a shop owner, who has to be in many groups to be able to put little shops in malls, 25 are far too little
Why not make an option that paying memners will have more groups? Like many others, I am having to make the difficult decision of what group to leave when I need to join another - sometimes several times a week. And like many others, this is interfering not just with social activities, but with business opportunities too.
Using groups is not an idea way to manage rentals, because it means the process cannot be fully automated. Perhaps, in this instance, finding a method whereby Land Options can also be assigned to named individuals would be the best solution, thus not only allowing the process of renting to be fully automated, but also allowing the tenant to be more precisely associated with a specific plot, and easing the pressure on groups to a certain extent. Perhaps, also, purely social groups with no land implications could be given a new group lite status of some sort, to ease the burden on the servers, and allow a higher overall limit for groups generally. It seems to me that a lot of the problems of "extra load on the servers", concerning this issue, can be resolved in a very simple way.
1) Run SL in a window by clicking the "run in window" checkbox in Preferences/Graphics. This will allow you access to the functions of your PC, whilst not having to log out of SL. 2) Do a Google for "free automated rent programs". Download a bunch of those that suit you and test them out to see which you would prefer to use. 3) Use the automated rental program to send invoices to the people or companies that you need to. For less prioritized group interaction (above the initial 25) use external e-mail. 1) Do a Google for "free automated email programs". Download a bunch of those that suit you and test them out to see which you would prefer to use. 2) Use the automated email program to send bulk notices/messages to the people or companies that you need to. 3) Smile as you watch SL turn from "crash test dummy volunteer course" to the world you wanted and helped create. I heartily support this issue!! Please raise the limit. 25 might sound like alot, but if you are in SL frequently it really isn't - some groups are not as active as others but you still want to keep them in your group list for notification of events, so it's tough to try and 'clear up' one's group list when you really want to join another and are at the limit. If network traffic 'is' the issue, then the suggestion made of allowing a higher group limit for premium accounts is an excellent idea.
As today I've had to leave two groups I didn't want to, in order to be able to rent new store space, I find this group limit very restrictive.
Network traffic is a poor excuse when people can conference call their friends list. Now permissions having to be checked all the time, that makes some sense but surely this is done on a first check basis when placing objects? The logic isn't to check every single group, it checks your active group and if that doesn't match, you can't carry out the task, so the system doesn't need to scale through 100's of groups for each avatar. Personally I'd like to see a system of different kinds of groups, security groups for land permissions, there's no need and often the owners of the group don't want, chat in these groups. Then there can be social groups whereby people can chat. I agree, I have had to leave groups which permitted me on certain land just so I could get building permission on another. 25 is not enough for a person who is actively involved in a lot of areas. At least raise it for premium members!
Linked: SVC-280 = Only viable way of realistically increasing group-count
Please read SVC-280 as it mentions why more than 25 groups would be a bad idea with the currently system. However, if we can get SVC-280 implemented first, then there's no reason a user couldn't have significantly more than 25 groups. I am however all for such a feature being premium only, more premium value is a good thing. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
New Feature
Reopened
Critical
More than 25 groups!
