On 08-06-2023 09:40, Jim Allen wrote:
I woke up this morning and am no longer the owner. I had to different emails as such both have been deleted. Why? I want my group back.
My immediate thought was that a rogue co-owner had co-opted the group and had locked the OP out. While this may or may not be the actual case, the possibility exists.
Group ownership has been discussed (and beaten to death?), here and in the beta group.
Some changes were made but, at least for me, not satisfactorily. Orphaned groups continue to pop up - not all due to laziness, procrastination or ignorance of the owners. I suspect many owners are reticent to create co-owners just for this very reason - there is nothing to prevent one owner from locking another owner out and stealing or destroying the group.
In this day and age of internet nasties, nefarious forum attacks/activities may not be at the top of the list but they do exist. These forums, by definition, span the globe and most members/owners have never met face to face. So for a group founder who has nurtured his baby into a viable community and is needing to have the safety of a co-owner, who can he trust? How can he assure that someone he promotes to co-ownership doesn't steal his group? (And still be stuck with automatic payment if that had been setup?) With the current system, he can't. I suspect that that is the main reason a significant number of groups do not have a co-owner and may become orphan groups (with more to come in the future).
I propose a new category for group permissions: Founder.
A founder would have identical rights and permissions as a regular group owner but with these differences:
? There can be only one founder per group
? Founder status can only be removed or transferred to another by a founder
? Founder status is automatically conferred onto the creator of a new group
? The existence of a founder is not required for a group
That should ensure that a group Founder would never be unwillingly locked out of a group he founded. It, hopefully, would also increase the compliance with creating co-owners and decrease orphaned groups. This could be implemented without upsetting the status quo of permissions and ownerships.
To get started, owners of existing groups with a single owner could promote themselves to founder status. For existing groups with a single RL owner but with multiple "owner" addresses, the owner could temporarily demote all "owners" but one in order to establish "Foundership" status. For existing groups with multiple RL owners, a "Founder" is probably not necessary nor desired. To change the address of a Founder, he could create a new regular owner and then transfer "Foundership" status to that address.
Comments?
BTW: "Groups.io will never remove the last owner."
"will" is better replaced by "should". We all have experienced the difference between what code "should do" and what actually can occur (although at this point that would be quite rare). Greg D outlined one such possibility.
Art
