Actually, I just discovered an advantage (or feature) with respect to network activating vs. network deactivating BuddyPress. With BuddyPress Network Activated, a subsite administrator has the ability to insert BuddyPress widgets in their site(s); however, upon network deactivation, all the subsite administrator’s BuddyPress widgets disappear. I’ve tested three BuddyPress widgets on a subsite so far and while the links in the Members and Groups widgets point to the main site (blog_id=1), the links in Recent Topics default to any forum.
From a Multisite network administrator’s point of view, it appears the advantage of having BuddyPress network activated is to grant subsite administrators the ability of linking to the group and member directories from their subsites. In constrast, having bbPress Network Activated would potentially create as many forums as there are subsites.
