MicrObey Collectives

In the MicrObey domain, there are two types of Collectives. Site Collectives and Collectives. We'll be talking about Collectives in this post. I'll talk about Site Collectives somewhere else. At length. Probably.

So what the hell is a Collective? At the 10,000 foot level, a Collective is a way to define a group of people who spend time together. Other names in SL are like families, covens, and, well, collectives. So if you join a collective, you're a part of that group of people who have special access to your MicrObey HUD. A Collective is segmented into three roles: Owner, Subject, and Trainer. Owners and Trainers within a Collective have access to a Subject's MicrObey HUD as if they were granted direct ownership of the HUD. For a subject, this means they don't have to manage their permissions if they don't want to. They can trust the Collective Owner. Makes things for surprising.

Now there are some requirements for participating in a Collective. To create a Collective or be a Trainer in a Collective, you must have a MicrObey Owner HUD license. To be a subject in a Collective, you must have a MicrObey license. Beyond that, have a blast. At the moment, you can have as many Collectives as you want, be a Trainer in as many Collectives as you want, and be a subject in as many Collectives as you want. I have no plans on restricting this at the moment.

So log in to the portal (or you can get there from the Owner HUD) and click on the "Collectives" button at the top of the page:

Right now at the time I'm writing this there's the Imperium Collective. Yeah. I added that.

There's a button at the top to add your own Collective. 

You've got some things to consider here. Of course, the name, which must be a unique name. Beyond that, there are two checkboxes which are important. Do you want subjects to be able to join without you verifying them? And do you want traines to be able to join without you verifying them? As a rule, I wouldn't let trainers join without verification. They are given serious privileges the second they become a trainer in your Collective. So this does beg the question what is verification, anyway? You're going to be send a message in SL telling you that a trainer wants to join. That message will have a link. All you need to do to verify someone is click on that link. The system will take care of the rest. If you ignore the message, it will expire after some period (like seven days) and no action will be taken.

Now back to the home page. Each row represents a Collective. With each Collective, you have actions that you can take based on your standing (or lack thereof) in that Collective. You can modify the Collective (if you're the owner), join as a trainer (or request to become a trainer) or leave the Collective as a trainer, join as a subject (or request to become a subject) or leave the Collective as a subject, and maybe get some information.

Now I'm not going to go into what each one of those do. They're largely based on how the owner has their Collective setup, and I may expand on all of that in the future without really breaking my intent here. Needless to say, this is the place to go to interact with Collectives. To join, browse, manage, and so on. Now you can get here from your HUD (both the Owner HUD and MicrObey HUD), or you can use the Set Password tool and login directly to the portal from anywhere.

Want to add people? If you're an owner (or a trainer), you can click the information icon on the far right of the listing. This will take you to a page like this:

Here you can add and remove trainers and subjects. When you add someone, you'll be able to look them up. The system will check to see if they have a valid corresponding license (owner HUD for trainers and MicrObey for subjects), and then will send them a message in SL that will contain a link for them to join the Collective. That link will only be valid for a period of time (like 7 days).

Standard configurations? As I envision this, I leave it free for any subject to join and leave at their whim, and require trainers wanting to join be verified. Your mileage may vary, and I expect it will.

OK that was more than enough. If you have any questions, feel free to either ask me in SL (or leave a comment here).