[peterverkooijen]

“What is the idea even behind this “groups” concept? I have been trying to understand it and figure out a way to just work with it, but it just doesn’t make sense, it’s backwards.”

“It’s like facebook fan pages. Why do people find this concept so strange?”

This is again the clash between forum and social network. They are NOT the same thing! They are different ways to structure a community. Mixing them is a recipe for disaster. Buddypress is pulled in two directions. The old-fashioned forum structure (bbpress) is winning.

A social network is organized around members. Member profiles are the main home pages, usually including a wire or blog. Members can friend or follow eachother and form groups and share content.

A forum is organized around topics. Members are secundary and are usually identified by anonymous usernames. Topics are arranged linearly, with main topics and sub-topics.

Because member management is horribly underdeveloped in Buddypress and the old BBpress users now set the tone in the developers community, Buddypress is turning into a confused forum script.