BuddyPress.org

How about we put all of the components that allow activity to hit the stream(s) into an array. Say…

$bp->activity->actions

Then, that array (which already exists) can be altered by a potential administration panel (or future permissions later.) BuddyPress plugins can register themselves as having activity with bp_activity_set_action( ) to which there should be a bp_activity_remove_action() that would add or remove activity abilities to the array such as $bp->activity->actions->comments_enabled

The array will have everything set to true by default. Constants in bp-custom.php or a plugin that makes an admin panel can then set those values to true or false…

bp_activity_get_action()

As long as there’s proper actions in place, plugin authors can sneak in there and append data to comments/forums/posts, whatever, provided everything is available at run time, which it usually is.

Long story short, add another $arg to set if commenting is allowed or not.

Even better…

This would also be a great reason/time to implement an activitymeta table, as it would allow this type of thing to not be core, but plugin territory if someone needs it. Or, that kind of on/off switch could just be in sitemeta and a plugin could block comments on specific activity actions from within the action.bp_blogs_activity_commenting = false

There’s actually a ton of ways this could be done pretty easily.

I think a great way to solve this problem would be to have a way for the activity stream item itself to know which post it is pertaining to, and pull that stream and display it on the post either in lieu or or addition to comments. Then people could comment on the activity stream from within the blog post too. Imagine a blog post that said “Comment on this blog post, and see what people are saying about it.” They’re the same but different, and if templated correctly now you have comments about the text of my blog post, and comments about the fact that I posted it.

Same for forum topics and posts. Maybe you use topic/post activity as a way to say “This post is dumb and I think you’re stupid” without ever mucking up the actual forum topic of discussion itself. So you branch out new activity not just with new branches, but whole new ways to discuss that specific activity without interrupting that activity.

Take this forum post. If it had a link to say “Comment on this forum post” and it slid open a post box from within the forum for someone to give me feedback and say “This post is really too long and boring” then from within the forum view you can see each forum post has 3, 4, 20 activity comments on them.

That, is the future of how to integrate the activity stream fully into a website.

…in my opinion(s).