Isn’t this what forums are for? Err.. not these forums, well yes these forums… but the BuddyPress forums… emmm paradigm or what.
Address the member propagation issue to the plugin author.
Adding to core while a nice idea is likely not to happen – although you can suggest it to the core devs – with a plugin working as well as it does it fulfils the need and WP/BP is intended to be extensible in this fashion.
I know BuddyPress is designed to to extendable. So is WordPress. But this is core functionality. Just as WP has hierarchical pages in core, BP should have hierarchical groups in core.
I’ve created a ticket for core developers’ consideration: https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/3961
P.S. As for propagation, the plugin author says it’s a very popular request, but he won’t do it http://www.generalthreat.com/2011/12/extending-groups-hierarchy-join-upstream/
P.P.S. I don’t know how well this plugin is working. Has conflicts with Registration Groups, and potentially others
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-buddypress-registration-groups-does-this-work-with-bp-group-hierarchy
Any updates on the current thinking on this issue?
@boonebgorges Any plans to write a proof of concept for taking messages and groups to CPT, now that 1.6 has been out in the wild for a while and is fairly stable?
I don’t have any immediate plans to do so. It’s a ton of work, and the current state of Messages and Groups is solid enough that it would be of marginal benefit to sink a ton of work into a proof of concept, especially given all the other core BP issues I’ve got on my plate. If someone else were interested in writing such a proof of concept, I’d be delighted to look at it.
@boonebgorges @djpaul In that case, any other ideas or plans for hierarchical groups, the way there are hierarchical pages in WordPress?
Personally I’m still not convinced, but I can imagine some use cases — but those use cases I could explain away by adding categories or tags to group (and making the individual groups’ screen more configurable about showing data from those categories).
Probably no immediate investigation into this unless someone wants to start on a patch for consideration.
@djpaul
It’s a usability thing. Let me take an example:
Site for networking of dentists in the UK.
What I have in mind is at top level 4 groups:
– England
– Wales
– Scotland
– Ireland
Then within each group, there are subgroups for counties.
Within each county subgroup, there are sub-subgroups for town/city etc.
Within the county sub-subgroup for town/city for particularly large cities, there could be sub-sub-subgroups for boroughs.
If Paul joins the group for Exeter, he should automatically become a member of Devon and England respectively.
I’m sure there are other ways of doing this; I just don’t see anything so instinctive or natural.
There can be multiple other examples.
For a medical professionals organization:
Doctor > Neurology > Clinical neurophysiology
For a university:
Business School > MBA > Managerial Accounting
etc
I don’t suppose a ton of people currently use hierarchical groups in BuddyPress. But I am certain that features like this will go a long way in opening up new markets for the script, way beyond just small techie groups.
+? This is probably so technically “involved” that it is its own point release, probably version bump. Consider this: what if a member could join a or subscribe to a group that’s in a different BuddyPress community where the activity for that group comes into his/her personal activity stream?
@qrahaman Actually, on the ticket the developers have indicated that technical implementation is rather simple. The issue is making a decision on whether this is something they want to do.
`Consider this: what if a member could join a or subscribe to a group that’s in a different BuddyPress community where the activity for that group comes into his/her personal activity stream?`
Not quite sure what you mean.
@sooskriszta,
Let’s say that ESPN started its own BuddyPress community. Several groups have been started: Football, Tennis, Soccer, and Curling. Furthermore, let’s say that @djpaul is super interested in the happenings of curling but the community to which he spends oodles of time, D&D, doesn’t have a “curling” group. What if Paul could subscribe/join ESPN’s Curling group from within D&D? That way Paul could stay in D&D but always be up on the latest curling news…. Is that better or did I muddy it up even further?
Disclaimer: I have no idea if Paul plays D&D or has any interest in the Olympic sport of curling (illustrative purposes only). 
@qrahaman I still don’t understand what you mean by join `Curling group from within D&D`
I mean of course, Paul can join Curling Group. Irrespective of where he spends his day, his wall https://buddypress.org/community/members/djpaul/activity/groups/ shows updates from all his groups, same as facebook.
@sooskriszta,
If you have your own community, it is entirely possible that you have a group within it that I would want to be fed updates. I don’t necessarily want to navigate to your community to then go to that group to figure out what’s going on every time. I want to stay in my own community and be fed all updates globally from whatever groups that I’ve subscribed to from all global communities. Is that already possible? If so, I’m all ears. 
`Is that already possible?`
@qrahaman Yes.
Are you familiar with Facebook wall? You don’t go to Coca-Cola page or your friend George’s profile to get updates from them….you get everything on your wall.
This is already possible in BuddyPress. Try the link I posted the previous message to see Paul’s wall.
@sooskriszta,
I still don’t get it. With the link you referenced, those are all updates from within the buddypress.org community. I don’t see any feeds from other communities outside of buddypress.org into Paul’s wall. I must be blind.
@qrahaman Right! So you are talking about stuff happening at other sites…like Disqus manages comments on many sites or Gravatar serves profile pictures to many sites.
This is not a social network feature. I don’t know any social network that does this.
It is an entirely different product. Furthermore, a hosted product, not a script.
Also, this is completely unrelated to this thread. If you’d like to discuss the concept further, please start a new topic.
It’s an extension of the “hierarchical groups” concept with it extending out to multiple BuddyPress communities. I am not referring to any other social networks or platforms. …only BuddyPress, which is not a “social network” but a “community” platform. Therefore “groups” across communities is fair game and relevant which is where “hierarchy” comes into play. If hierarchy is going to be pursued within one community, might as well tackle “across” multiple communities. Earlier, I said it was a “consideration” and would be an incredibly difficult thing to pull off. No further discussion necessary; thus, no need to start a whole other thread.
Community = Social network
BuddyPress is a social networking script. The tagline of BuddyPress is “Social networking in a box”.
`If hierarchy is going to be pursued within one community, might as well tackle “across” multiple communities.`
Doesn’t make any sense. It’s akin to saying that if WordPress allows hierarchical pages on one site, might as well find a way to be able to add pages to CNN or ESPN.
