Groups Explained

How do groups work on OrBSydia?

So the OrBSydia network has two systems it has Profile & Groups, your primary account is your Profile from there you can add Avatar & Cover and choose how people con communicate with you on the network. When you first join the site you should set your account settings for group invites.

This page by clicking your name at the top of the site and going to account settings or by clicking the gear icon in the bottom left of the site. From there go to the Group Invites. While you are at it you can go to Email Preferences and toggle the settings how you want for the amount of email you get from this network.

By checking the box in the screenshot above your basically saying I don’t want to be invited to any groups unless I give my consent first. This is something a lot of users had asked for on Social VR. And is a native feature here. If you don’t check the box then anyone that makes a group on the website can tentatively invite you to their group.

What is a Parent Group?

A parent group is created by myself or the core team on the site for various topics of interest be it gaming, games, virtual social platforms, game engines etc.

The parent group is considered an ecosystem that is set to private to start. This is done so that users that don’t have an interest in said platform or game won’t see any info about those discussions in their news feed without first being part of the parent group. Once a user is part of the parent group they will have access to sharing photos and images with that group based on the subject matter of that group. Members can create their own groups for interests related to established parent groups and then assign that parent group to their own group which then assigns them to the subgroup of that parent group. Sounds like a lot but really easy to do. Once you have made your own group.

What types of groups are there?

On our network, we have a number of group types based on the type of player you are. If you a gamer (alias) or an Avatar (Eg: Second Life, Sinespace, VR Chat Other) Then you have a type of user and based on the type of user you are and the group type you select the information on the site will adapt your experience to that. So then the question asked is

What if I’m a human, gamer, avatar?

Your profile is your master account its what you best identify with. And you can change your settings any time you want to best reflect that. However if you have alt’s or others you can list those in your profile, and yes there are settings to choose who can see that information all from your profile settings.

This way you don’t need to make more than one account on the site. You can also create more than one group for various groups of friends and or members on the site. Example: You could have a Second Life group for your Store in Second Life, you can choose if it’s public, private or hidden (NSFW) but virtual content. You could then have a guild in Night of the Dead and assign the night of the dead parent group to your guild group.

See the Example Below of Sub Groups in the Second Life Parent Group

The way that orbsydia is set up every game, software and platform that is listed is a Parent Group. So if you have a community that is based on photoshop you could have a discussion group with Photoshop as the parent group and anyone that is a member of the photoshop group will see your group listed once assigned as a parent group.

Any member-created groups can be assigned permissions as public, private or hidden within the parent groups. Hidden no one can see the group but those that are members. Giving out the URL of a hidden group to someone, not in a group will return a 404 Error Page.

When you create a group you can choose to invite people that are members of the site that haven’t opted out of being invited to groups as well as a check box for those that are your direct connections. For the short term while this site is in beta I’d ask that you only invite people that are on your Connect (Connections).

Users are able to follow other users but they can’t message another user unless they are connected. This is done to cut down private message spam which on my other sites is a big no-no. Once a member is a member of the site they can go to the member’s page to see whos on and request to be connected or just follow a user. Following a user that maybe not be a closer friend allows you to see any public or follower only messages. Users that post messages can choose messages to be public, followers only, connected or only you for say a draft.

This network is designed to make it easy for people to share information based on interest while still giving people options for privacy so you only have to digest as much information as you are interested in while still engaging in groups and profile discussions.

Please note that groups have a full set of settings to make them even more useful to members including email subscriptions, notices, event calenders, personal discussion forums, newsfeeds, and more Each group a member makes is creating their own ecosystem within the network that they can use to connect with like-minded members.

Feel free to discuss this and or ask for help further in the comments below.

Cheers! Athayus Quan!