BuddyPress.org

Suggestion: Eliminate Automatic Joining of Public Groups

I’ve got a problem with having to join Groups to participate in the Forums for two reasons:

1. The prospect of having to join a Group is not intuitive and will intimidate users, preventing them from participating. What does it mean to join a group? Will they now be subject to group emails? Or other solicitations from within the group? There is no practical reason for this barrier to exist.

2. Groups should serve a social purpose (common interests, common goals, etc.) and joining one should MEAN something. Looking at my profile and seeing that I’m in 5 groups should tell a visitor a lot about who I am. However, in this format, I’ll end up being members of dozens of groups, when all I really want is to add to those forum discussions. In this format, the value of being in a Group is cheapened. And, there could be a couple of groups on a site that a member really wants to participate and follow, but now their activity stream is cluttered with activity from all these discussions. From a user’s perspective, these are 2 different things.

Maybe have a checkbox below your forum entry asking: “Join the __________ Group?” or “Request to Join the ______________ Group?”