There are two main needs a group have in communicating: 1) broadcast informations from group's admins (so called "top->down") 2) broadcast communications from group's non-admin components (or "bottom->up") The first need is nearly fully resolved by notices: an admin (Officers and up to Owner(s)) should ever send a notice to all members to notify a trouble or an event. The two "levels" should be differentiated to permit a user to block "events" while continue receiving "troubles/alerts" (but this should be another issue ). From the bottom-level point of view (the users' one) the instrument is represented by the goup's public IM channell: this permits the user-to-user and user-to-admins communications even if a user is (normally) forbidden to send notices. IMs are also used for group chatting, which is the cause of this (MISC-64) issue. So I propose to introduce "levels" into group's IM: a base "chat" level, an higher "events/notifies" level and finally an highest "troubles/alerts" level. To be more "graphical": 3--- alerts 2--- events 1--- chat (default) The level should be represented by a real (compact) slider, into IM window, with the three notches:

—

– <

- (e.g. for a "level 2" set)

The reasons are the followings: 1) users loves IM chatting, and one of the group's function is to aggregate users by means of chat also, but not all loves it (admins specially hate it, lol) and it may be bothering sometimes. 2) a user may have the need to alert group or admins of a trouble 3) using a "IM level" filter, set group by group (with intelligent or group admin's preset defaults) one can avoid IM's chatter remaining able to send group-wide alerts to admins (as I've wrote above, admins ever can send a trouble/alert notice) Implementing levels, users can ever chatter respecting each one's right to don't be bothered by the chat itself. One can filter out group's IM chat while remain into the group and can still receive alerts and events. While chat level shouldn't be moderated ('cause of it can be filtered), events and alerts levels should be: a new role "IM handler" may decide who can mute bothering users which can spam into upper levels. E.g. maybe Helpers, Officers and obviously the Owner(s) can have "mute events level user" and "mute alert level user" abilities (similar to a local IM-ban/disabling feature). As a facility, I suggest to prefix "events" and "alerts" levels' messages with respectively "#" and "!" characters writing them and, perhaps, using a color code to display the differences: white for (unprefixed) normal chat, yellow for events and red for alerts (configure the colors to have high contrast). So one with no-level filtering (1-level: chat) can read an IM window like this: .-----------------------------------------------------

user1: bla blabla bla blabla

user2: blablabla blablabla

user1: bla bla bla bla bla bla

user3: blabla bla blabla bla

user4: #Party is ready to go in 5 minutes, in room-2

user2: blablabla blablabla

user1: bla bla bla bla bla bla

user5: ! warning: a silly guy is using weapons near room-1

officer1: ! TP me to room-1, user5, plz '-----------------------------------------------------

While one with mid-level filtering (2-level: events) should read: .-----------------------------------------------------

user4: #Party is ready to go in 5 minutes, in room-2

user5: ! warning: a silly guy is using weapons near room-1

officer1: ! TP me to room-1, user5, plz '-----------------------------------------------------

And finally one with full-level filtering (3-level: alerts) should read: .-----------------------------------------------------

user5: ! warning: a silly guy is using weapons near room-1

officer1: ! TP me to room-1, user5, plz '-----------------------------------------------------

A user can adjust the filter for each group as he/she wants, an IM handler (role) may stop mid/top-level spammers disabling them to IM (temporarily or not, like the freeze/ban mechanims), an admin may set the filter to receive alerts only... and all can finally chat-in-peace without bothering each one or forcing one to leave mass-chatter groups. As a final note/suggestion, the levels definitions' can have a 0-level position, to permit non-group temporary guest to partecipate in group chat: reading only or writing as IM handler/Owner will decide. Add-on: instead of a single-position's slider (or radio buttons) is perhaps more usefull to use checkboxes to independently enable/disable the "levels" so that one can choose to enable chat(1) and alerts(3) while leaving events(2) disabled and so on. [_] alerts [_] events [_] chatter ... [_] (future message types) This method is more flexible than a single slider even for future expansion to other types of message (e.g. "* >>>FLASH NONSTOPPABLE<<<", note the "*" prefix).