What are public groups? I noticed the phrase when looking through someone's profile. Are they just groups that members can choose to join?

If they are, I think it'd be sort of cool to enact them. We could have little clubs. lol

^Yes, I had been wondering this as well. Anyone out there got an answer?

BTW, why isn't there some sort of Q&A Sticky thread in the About Forums? It seems like there are always questions.
Just wondering . . . ;)

I opened the same exact thread about 1 month ago. Still no reply :sleepy:

I opened the same exact thread about 1 month ago. Still no reply :sleepy:

Well, guess what? I am going to post in this thread every day from now on until the questions is answered.
Or until I get brigged or banned. ;)

So mods, what be the answer?

I've always wondered about this too

Well, until someone answers our question, I did a bit of researching over at the vBulletin site.
A search for "Public Groups" in their manual only returned "User Groups". Here's what it said:
What is a User Group?

A user group is just what it sounds - a group of users. By default, the vBulletin software includes the following user groups:

* (COPPA) Users Awaiting Moderation - all users that have not been validated by an administrator or moderator will be included in this group (for bulletin boards that require user accounts to be validated by an administrator).
* Administrator - all vBulletin administrators are included in this group.
* Moderators - all vBulletin moderators are included in this group.
* Registered - this group is populated with all the standard users.
* Super Moderator - this group contains all the super moderators. A super moderator can moderate all forums on the bulletin board.
* Unregistered / Not Logged In - this group contains all visitors to the bulletin board who have not logged in, or haven't registered for a user account.
* Users Awaiting Email Confirmation - if you have configured your vBulletin forum to require email verification before the registration is completed, all users in this group have registered, but haven't yet activated their account.

In order to control user's access to your bulletin board, each group has a comprehensive set of options that influence exactly what a member of the group has permission to view/do on your bulletin board. For example, a user that belongs to the "Registered" user group has permission to view the board and post messages, but he/she can't access the control panel or post public events on the vBulletin calendar.

95% of all permissions-based configuration will be dealt with by editing the existing seven standard user groups. By editing a user group option, you can change the permissions for a particular set of users across the whole bulletin board. If you would like to alter a user groups options for a particular forum only, you can set up custom forum permissions. Let's take a look at three practical scenarios:

1. Jack would like to force all users to register for the bulletin board before they can view the forums.

In this case, Jack would need to turn off the can view board option for all user groups apart from Registered, Moderators and Administrators.

2. Jill would like to set up a private forum for administrators only.

Since these permissions changes affect just a single forum (not all forums), Jill can accomplish this configuration by turning off the can view forum and can post new threads options (for this forum only) for all user groups apart from the Administrators.

that feature is not used on SSC. You can choose whatever group though.

I see...
so this is the list:
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showgroups.php?

WHat's "The Brig"?

And can people create their own groups if this feature was activated?

No they can't. The brig is the people who get brigged (temporarily banned) and then unbrigged.

^Not to long ago Pavlo here was on that list. Remember those days? :lol:

^Punk :sleepy: