Iza Onyx Interesting idea. I can see how it might be fair to do this, but kind of a separate issue from the above! Suggest it in a post. :)

SophieJeanneLaDouce Resident Yes, what I'm thinking is that as mentioned this could be like other permissions in the group per member role.

Peter Stindberg Useful as is in what way? With what I'm proposing, the ban member list could be hidden or shown. Everything could still be the same if wanted, this just allows more control for group owners.

The Rascal I value transparency. Your proposal would allow every group owner to be intransparent. Unlike your hoped-for effect, I think drama will increase if there is a shadow docket instead of an open list.

I rarely ban people from my groups. But if I do, I have no problem standing up to that and to explain/defend the decision if challenged.

Maybe I'm naive, but I can't think of any reason NOT to publicly own a banning decision. It's the group owners rules, it's the group owners discretion to ban people - why would a group owner want to hide that?

Peter Stindberg Every group owner to not be transparent? That's a bold assumption.

I personally feel like it's no one's business to see who's banned on an owner's group list. If you were banned from a group (whether by something you did or invalidly), I'm sure you wouldn't want your name visible to the public.

The issue of transparency can go both ways. I'm not sure exposure resolves that really.

The Rascal Let's agree to disagree.

The Rascal "If you were banned from a group (whether by something you did or invalidly), I'm sure you wouldn't want your name visible to the public"

I know you didn't ask me here, but as a matter of fact, I do want my name visible.

There is only one public group where I was banned from, the Drivers of SL. I had been a member of it since my second week in SL (2019), an admin for almost 3 years, and then I resigned and remained a member until October 2025 when I was banned by the owner without a word, which had nothing to do with the group, only with her incredibly poor decisions she had made for a grid drive. Don't worry, that is totally irrelevant here.

Back when I was an admin there, I banned about 37 people, but I also reverted at least a dozen wrongful bans that were issued by others. I was always able to explain these decisions, both the bans and the removal of bans.

Eventually when I ended up on the same ban list, some people IMed me and asked what happened. I did send a group notice too (the thing is, if you want to be a good, efficient group moderator, you also need to know how groups in SL work), but I'm sure some people actually saw my name on the top of the ban list at the time. Now it's buried under a lot of other names. Back "in my time" the owner always kept telling me how she didn't want oppression and I had to explain every single ban. Not even bans, but warnings, too. Now, they are happy to ban anyone, up to some 200 people on their ban list. Even though the list can be seen by anyone, they don't need to explain these bans to anyone.

However if anyone happens to spot my name on that ban list in the future, and asks me "hey, you were in this group for a long time, what happened?" I welcome that. And if they ask the owner, that's fine, too. It is up to them what they want with it, and who they ask about it. It is much better than letting oppressive, dishonorable people "cancel" you without a trace.

Drake1 Nightfire This is part of the problem. That's great you have such high trust in your groups, but that behavior come also lead to assumptions and dangers towards people you don't know or understand the real circumstance for of what happened.

The Rascal Dangers? What dangers? OOOOh I banned someone from my parcel because a group I am in has banned them and I trust the owners of that group... Where is the danger? I dont care what the circumstances are, there a few groups I am in that i know the owners and trust them.

AlettaMondragon Resident People have all sorts of scenarios/reasons for banning, and being banned by someone. I think that's between the group owners and them. It's a privacy issue, and we shouldn't assume that just because someone was banned they deserved to be or did something bad, as that might not always be the case, but that's just my opinion.

The Rascal I think that's exactly what transparency helps with. Even if it won't change the outcome of the possibly wrongful ban (but sometimes it does), if some people happen to see your name on the ban list of a public community group which you had been an active member for years, it will raise some questions, they'll ask you about it, and they will be able to see problems in that community that they hadn't before. With your proposed option to hide this, certain people could eliminate this transparency in their groups and use it to ban people from a community without having to face consequences. You call that drama and confrontation, and if it's a private group of a few people, it might be. In a large, open, public group however, it is a matter of oppression and mass manipulation.

AlettaMondragon Resident I hear what you're saying to a degree, but there are some very large publicly open groups. I'm not sure it's fair or respectful to expose names to thousands of people that are on the ban list. Group owners may not want to deal with the outcomes of that, but yet want to secure their space. I'm not sure that allowing the list of names equates to transparency. Both group owners and banned members can come up with their own stories either way.

The Rascal As Thomas Jefferson might or might not have said, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

It's very popular nowadays to build a "cancel culture" where people expect a form of "freedom" where they face no consequences for their actions. That is not freedom. Freedom comes with responsibilities.

Applied to the group ban lists, this means the owner or the management of a public group should face the risk of being questioned about or complained to because of their decision that they banned someone, whether it's right or happens in a peaceful, polite way is a different question.

It's usually a fairly simple choice. Am I willing to face consequences and take responsibility? Is it worth any risks? Because if it's not, then there are certain things that are not for the people who are not willing to take responsibility. This is one of them. If most group owners and managers are fine with the existing system and they either choose to explain their bans when needed or say they don't have to, you can do the same, too.

Aglaia Resident It's mostly irrelevant most of the time if you're not an admin in the group, but it can be quite useful info in a very few certain cases. For example if someone has harassed you in that group before, you talked to its owner/manager and you see the person banned from the group later, you know you can use the group chat without that person harassing you again - assuming they didn't plant an unknown alt in the group. Other than some weird things like this, I think most people never look at it, so it doesn't really matter if anyone can see the list.

Cynianne Hellershanks You know they can dodge that with VPN, and it could also ban random people just because they use the same service, right?

AlettaMondragon Resident I did not now that.

Cynianne Hellershanks AlettaMondragon Resident is correct. There is this feature called CG-NAT. In a nutshell, when you connect to a server on the Internet, your IP address (as seen by the server) will be a random IP from a "pool" of IP Addresses that the ISP owns. So if you block based on IP, you might be blocking the wrong person because the perpetrator next time they connect they use a different IP, while an innocent person uses the blocked IP.