Group-owned land provides a great degree of flexibility for multiple users to collaborate on their builds. However, when not configured properly, it can also provide more difficulties. A poorly set-upgroup-owned parcel could leave you unable to easily remove other people's objects from your land without accidentally removing your own!

Kinds of Objects on a Group-Owned Parcel

With group-owned land, there are three categories of objects, as listed in the Objects tab of About Land window, accessed by selecting World > About Land:

• Owned by parcel owner: These are objects that have been deeded to the group (in the Edit window, click Set to choose a group, then enable the Share with Group option, then click Deed). Deeding to the group is an excellent choice for any object that's going to be a permanent fixture of the land. However, group-deeded objects can't pay Linden Dollars to other residents, and group-deeded objects that accept L$ (like donation boxes) will divide the L$ evenly among all group members.
• Set to group: These are objects owned by group members that have been set to the group. (In the Edit window, click Set and choose a group.) This is a must-have setting for any object that's going to stay on the parcel that shouldn't be deeded to the group.
• Owned by others: These are objects owned by people who are not in the group, as well as objects owned by group members that are not set to the group. This is very important. Anything you build that isn't set to the right group gets placed in this category.

About Autoreturn

If all the objects on your group land are either deeded or set to the group, any third-party objects will appear in the Owned by others category, where they can be returned through the About Land window or through Autoreturn. You can set Autoreturn in the Objects tab of the About Land window; it's the field labeled Autoreturn other residents' objects (minutes, 0 for off). As the name implies, you should set this field to 0 to turn it off.

Autoreturn should return all objects categorized as Owned by others (in order of most recent to oldest) before any objects belonging to the group, which helps your group prevent malicious users from trying to attack your build by bringing in their own objects. When you enter a number for Autoreturn, it's set instantly and retroactively, so entering 15 (for example) will immediately cause any objects marked as Owned by others that have been left for more than 15 minutes to return to their owners.