Re: Removing Groups From Forums
@peterverkooijen said; “Talk about dropping rigidity and opening up to an amazing new flexibility and power is pure nonsense”. Ah Peter, without visionaries such as yourself, how would we ever have got to where we are..?! Growing out of rigid definitions into new flexibility is where the virtual world is heading, like it or not. Everything you see online now will be long dead in five years, and all the concepts you hold dear buried deep. Might as well get used to it.
BuddyPress is a mess, as I see it. It isn’t really anything, and at the same time it’s too much. If I want a community conversation stream, along with simple WordPress themes, etc., there’s Mingle. If I want a forum on my site that’s easy too; there’s BBPress, Mingle Forum, etc. If I want member groups regardless of these, there’s, erm… there’s… well, BuddyPress does that, kind of, in a big and over-complicated way.
BuddyPress should be about making social contacts. The name’s a bit of a clue, right? In other words, friends and contacts with grouping of such, contact streams, and strong privacy for users so they determine who sees what they post. On top of that, as it’s a social tool; community moderation/banning, and reporting to site admins in a simple and obvious way. Oh, and of course, easy to see notifications such as friend/contact requests, etc. Who thought it was a good idea to *include* forums in all of this, and relate them to groups?! Each entity and its associated operations should be separate and self-sustaining. Basic OOP.
It just doesn’t do anything easily, does it? And the hype on the download pages about plugins to do whatever you like is just hype, really. Oh, it ‘kind of’ does everything you want, but only kind of. You have to jump through hoops, and even then you’re fighting with a forum which tries to be a group trying to hold conversation streams together.
I’m interested in productive discussion about social networking sites and their take-up and impact, though not here as I feel it’s not the right place. For one thing, the developers and those who kiss up don’t like to hear how their baby was malformed from the start. If anyone is interested in finding solutions to creating truly interactive social networks in the easiest and most stable way possible at present, please email any-name-you-like at our domain. 
