Regardless @crashutah post and not being sure of the meaning of the word “alludes”, I hope @boonebgorges will find time to commit if not in trunk, in a branch a fix for avatar upload problem since my bp install has the same non functional image upload issue and has no common database `key` with wp.org or wp.com
I’ve encounter the same requirements for a profile field to be editable only by admin that is non-editable by suscribers.
Someone could eventually commit a small plugin that allows this sort of administrative tagging.
Outside of buddypress perspective, I end up using wp_usermeta database table with a call to add_user_meta($user_id, $meta_key, $meta_value [, $unique] ) and when i need the info stored i use get_currentuserinfo()
references :
https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/add_user_meta
https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_currentuserinfo
