The server side of the new Estate Owner and Estate Manager (EO & EM) is on the ADITI (Preview) grid. It was being discussed at the Server Beta UG meeting Thursday.

Arcade Express ..Wonderous Love

This new feature is in server version DRTSIM-343 in ADITI. We know it as version 17.03.31.325149 in the main grid (AGNI), which is the current RC release running on all three RC channels. But, we don’t yet have a viewer with which to access the changes. That is ‘work’ in progress. 

The change is… the ability for EO & EM’s to override parcel-access settings. So, if you rent land from an estate owner you’ll have a possible new restriction, depending on the (landlord) estate owner or manager.

Mazidox Linden describes the feature as, “…allows an estate owner to require that Allow Public Access is set at the parcel level.”

The immediate question for estate owners is, does this override or change the parcel setting? Here is where wording and how we understand the words allows a degree of ambiguity.

Imagine you own a parcel and you want to keep people out and the EO wants to allow people in… the ‘why’ isn’t the issue here. This is about how the feature works.

If the EO overrides your setting, what do you see in your settings panel? Do you see access you set as ‘open’ changing to ‘closed’? Or do the ban lines just not go up? Then I would be trying to figure out why my setting isn’t working.

Grumpity Linden tells us that the panel will ‘indicate’ you cannot enable/disable access once the EO-EM sets the overriding control. So, if you have a setting then this feature rolls out… what happens?

Grumpity tells us, “…the setting would just change and it would be disabled in the UI.

If an Estate requires parcels to allow Public Access and they [parcel owners] do not follow the rules in the covenant, currently Estate [O & M] has only manual ways of enforcing.  Now estate has a switch.”

Whirly Fizzle brought up the point that Parcel Access and Group Access don’t work as people expect. Grumpity explains they are working to fix that.

See: BUG-4994 – If both allow public access and allow group access are ticked under About Land -> Access, only group members can access the parcel, even though allow public access is enabled and not greyed out.

Grumpity Linden explains, “We are trying to find the best way to express the access sets most clearly, which is why there isn’t a viewer for you to play with yet. The UI is changing to better convey what you actual settings permit.  No functionality is changing (on that front).”

If you haven’t realized, enabling Group Access overrides Parcel Access enabled. With both enabled only group members will be able to enter the parcel.

Grumpity explaining:

• EO & EM can now force parcels to be no more restrictive than the Estate level setting (minus ban list).

• UI for both Estate and Parcel access management is hella confusing. We’re making changes to make it less confusing.  The weirdness where you check “Public access” and “Group access” and end up with group ONLY unless you also check “PIOF” and then you get group + public w/PIOF … that will not stand.

• Estate level setting will include a warning dialogue to hopefully deter EM from messing with this override willy-nilly.

This explains the intended operation. Estate owners asked what happens when an EO or EM play with the settings toggling access on and off? Does the parcel setting revert to its previous setting or is it changed by the EO/EM’s changes? The change/override question…

Grumpity says it CHANGES the setting and blames that on Rider Linden. So, if the EO/EM mess with settings parcel owners will have to change their settings… well when the parcel is supposed to be restrictive and the EO/EM sets less restrictive settings.

Grumpity, “Hey hey, when I said blame Rider, I didn’t mean get out your lynch mob!”

Summary

I see the need for this feature for EO & EM’s. But, it appears there is an old and new problem of clearly communicating what the settings actually do in the viewer control panels. Until we see a viewer with the proposed panel changes we won’t know how well that has been done.

As of today (4/7), there is no RC or Project viewer available. Nor is there a beta version available for use on ADITI. As Grumpity and the other Lindens weren’t commenting on the wording that would appear in the revised panels, I would guess the viewer is still in Interface design. Which would mean QA, Project/RC stages are ahead. So, we may not see a viewer for 2 or 3 weeks.