List of abilities and roles for Second Life groups

I wish that me spending more time in the virtual world of Second Life could be a good excuse for not blogging lately, but it really isn't. Oh well, while I try to get into a blogging mood again, I've got a little something to share that will hopefully be useful to fellow SLers. I'd like to talk about Second Life group management today (and no, it's not another we-need-more-groups rant - Grace already nailed that subject better than I ever could).

Groups are a great way for two or more people to manage a parcel of land in SL for a common project, but when you need to have a larger group of users with different skills and roles, you might want to define more roles with different abilities in the group that owns your land. For example, you might not want to give less experienced users full control of objects on group owned land, but you might want to give them the ability to send out group notices.

And something similar is just what I'll soon have to do on a group owned land. As I need to carefully define the roles, I wanted to have a table outside SL with all possible abilities for roles listed. I was surprised not to find such a list, so I made one on my own. You can get the list in Excel and PDF format on Scribd.

As there are three default roles (Everyone, Officer, and Owner) in each SL group, I also marked which abilities each of the default role has. I also copied the comments for each of the ability. These comments are available in the Abilities tab under the Members & Roles tab in the Group Information window and most of them include more details and the occasional useful warnings for group owners, so you might want to read them if you're not sure what a role does. If you're new to managing SL groups, you might also want to read the Knowledge Base articles about the Group Roles and about Group Owned Land. Torley also has a great tutorial about creating groups and using the Group Information window for beginners.

And I would love to hear how you go about defining SL group roles or any good advice/best practice you have about managing group roles and choosing abilities!