Group Leadership Succession
tracked
Jack Skallagrimson
This would need to come after 'mark group as inactive' being implemented, however...
I have a group that we started 20 years ago with some friends. I'm the only one who's still around, the other members have not logged in since then, however I'm stuck in the Everyone role. I'd like to take over and continue the work we were doing under the same brand name without having to start my own (losing the historical founder, lineage).
In cases where no one cares, in all intents and purposes it would not affect anything, and it would only do good, maybe allow a (reversable, observed) trial takeover period for enthusiastic people who once enjoyed the spirit of an old group and want to breathe some new life into it. This is the first wave of inter-generational hands-changing, but If SL continues on well into the future this issue may start to come up more and more.
Wow Guilds have this & have had it for a long time.
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Earnest Deed
A major no to this. If a group is deleted due to having no members left its membership does not include any deactivated accounts. If one of those account is reactivated then the group reactivates with that group member in their previous level. If the founder is still an active account then they receive IMs about the group they had closed, but which a random reactivation has restored to life.
Extrude Ragu
It sounds good until you realize the chaos this can lead to if for example you have a store group with 10,000 people, and some random person decides to take it over.
Groups aren't just used for communities but also for commerce etc. There is no reliable way to tell what the group is being used for automatically, so you would open a lot of people up to grief or brand identity theft.
Jennifer Boyle
Extrude RaguPerhaps there should be categories for groups?
Beatrice Voxel
If you're the only one in the group, and you've only got the Everyone role, you should (!) be able to get that addressed via a trouble ticket.
But, keep in mind, this may be 'broken' for a reason.
In the past there have been episodes where bad actors invaded a group and essentially took it over. If the owners and officers are gone, then the invaders should NOT gain all the rights and privileges of the group. Someone needs to manually promote a successor... lest successors usurp the group.
What might work is a 'designated succession' tree, among specific roles within a group. Owner, officers, and perhaps another role. People in those roles will get automatically promoted, but no one will be added to the lowest-tier succession group if this happens. That way, control of the group can be maintained, and a rival group can't flood it and force succession to happen.
Dana Enyo
I'll just toss in a "What sometimes happens" story for the good of the order.
One day a few years ago I got an IM from someone asking a question that a Group Owner would be able to answer. My response was "Beats me, I'm just a Member." They replied, "No, you're the Owner!" I checked the group Profile and, sho'nuff, there's my name. The Profile doesn’t show the previous owner, only the Creator, so there was no way to ask "Why me?" Only guess is that the Owner wanted to jump ship, saw that my first name is the same as the original Creator, and handed it to me. I found a friend to co-own with me and we've had it ever since
I don't know if this helps, but maybe emphasizes the need for a better way to do group transfers?
AlettaMondragon Resident
I believe the Lab can help with such issues if they can verify the situation and that the intention to take over is benevolent. I've seen examples of this, at least things that looked like this.
I'm not sure how your idea would work if not like that. Should the current group owner be able to choose names of group members as "successors" if the owner goes absent? Like a will? But when should that kick in? What if the chosen successor had left the group before they would inherit the group, or if they are inactive as well? How many successors could you choose? If you select several, how would be the order of succession established? Should this be all automated?
This brings up quite a few questions.
SweetShaylie Resident
I think the general idea of this is important and it is an issue I think needs to be sorted. However the implementation can't just be to automatically promote any member retroactively. The reason for this is that store owners could loose access to their store groups if this would happen.
My suggestion would be to make it a toggle option in the group itself if management succession should be active or not, as well as adding options for setting a time limit on how long the group owner should be inactive before succession is activated and a priority list for who can take over, which could be either a list of names of specific people or anyone from a specific role.
This would sadly leave all old inactive groups in an inactive state, but it would prevent most currently active and new groups from turning inactive.
SL Feedback
Thanks for writing this up — the need for a clear “leadership succession” path for long-inactive/legacy groups (where the owner/officers are gone and remaining members are stuck without the ability to manage or revive the group) has come up before.
We found your report is a duplicate of
BUG-231576
from Second Life’s previous bug tracking system
(the Jira archive): “Legacy Group - owner left, promote active manager.”
Because it matches the same underlying issue (how to handle groups whose leadership has effectively disappeared), we’re going to set this item to
Tracked
and associate your feedback with that existing request. We don’t have an ETA to share, but adding your specific use case—preserving a long-running group’s identity/lineage and enabling a safe, reversible takeover process when leadership is inactive—helps illustrate why this matters.Thanks again for taking the time to document the scenario, especially with the long-term “inter-generational” angle for older groups.
Jack Skallagrimson
SL Feedback Okay, after thinking about this for a little while I have some additional feedback that may help the suggestion move forward. I realize that as it stands, my proposal isn't exactly actionable today, and seems a little half-baked.
The issue that becomes apparent is that there certainly needs to be a 'human checked' element (to prevent abuse), but there also needs to be an 'automatic process' element (to streamline the process of empowering individuals for whom this feature could really benefit).
To further my proposal into something actionable, I'd like to share an idea that came out of the cypherspace, called dark crystal, or social secret sharing technology.
"The goal is to be able to back up and recover some secret data. The secret owner chooses a set of custodians, who each receive a shard of the secret data. If the data is lost, the custodians can return their shards to the secret owner and the secret recovered."
now, what this is NOT:
web 3.0, append-only ledger, blockchain, ponzi scheme, get rich quick scheme
what this IS:
social secret sharing
So, I don't have all the implementation details, I leave that up to The Lab, however I do envision an 'uniquely SL' adaptation of this technology for the purpose of legacy systems.
Imagine I have built my little empire in SL, I've been managing my estate with the help of my group. Now I've just gotten the unfortunate news that I only have 6 months to live. In the first 3 months, I create a series of unique artifacts and distribute them amongst my retinue, then I do end up dying in this scenario.
Now, these artifacts would be 'shards'. Apart they are essentially inert, they may appear as a nice little amulet, trinket, what-have-you. Shards could be 'in' any object's contents, as with scripts, or they may end up being an extended part of object permissions. But when combined (or under a certain set of conditions (smart contract)) it could grant the individual parts holders special powers or permissions as though they were the full leader, or appoint them leadership, or (some other preprogrammed mechanism to activate a solution as appropriate).
This may be something to consider, as I think it may end up as something that doesn't just empower new or returning people, but allows those with clever foresight to safeguard their legacy.
SL Feedback
updated the status to
tracked