BuddyPress.org

I am one of the disenchanted users who went away from BuddyPress that @imath mentions in his post https://buddypress.org/2023/04/buddypress-has-a-new-purpose/, in which he also promises a new user-focused direction for BuddyPress.

That all sounds fantastic. The “big change” introduced in 12.0.0 is quite welcome. And I welcome the change of heart from https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6345 “We don’t have — and should never have — enough settings to warrant creating separate screens for them.” to what we now have – multiple tabs for BuddyPress settings.

But, and I am sorry to say, and believe me I say it out of love, BuddyPress is still living in the early naughties. When setting up any community, the biggest CSF is signup and onboarding. A signup such as https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/4132 is absolutely essential for any self-respecting community software. If anything, I would remove the need to signup with a password – modern applications increasingly use “magic links”, rather than ask for a password during signup.

Another crucial one is admin control over what is shown in group/member lists https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/4126, https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/4131 and https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/4683

Not including basic Group Management in the core also doesn’t make a lot of sense https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/4540

Another one is to take advantage of and approximate the behaviour of WordPress https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/4569 or https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/4017
In the last 12-13 years, I may have missed if there have been developments in this direction, but seems to like there haven’t.