Owdy Posted February 11, 2010 Share Posted February 11, 2010 Same feature what SMF has. You can create group where users can request to join. After that, admin or group moderators accept or deny that request. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amy T Posted February 11, 2010 Share Posted February 11, 2010 OCF also has this feature and is a nice feature. Right now I have a store mod that some what servers the purpose of this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bfarber Posted February 11, 2010 Share Posted February 11, 2010 FYI, this suggestion has been made in this forum several times already (usually labeled "social groups" or something similar). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolfie Posted February 11, 2010 Share Posted February 11, 2010 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reality Extractor Posted October 3, 2012 Share Posted October 3, 2012 FYI, this suggestion has been made in this forum several times already (usually labeled "social groups" or something similar). I see that this feature has been suggested as early as 2007. It's 2012 now and most viable competitors offer group memberships and the ability for users to apply to a group where a group leader (who is not an admin or a mod) approves the membership. Is there any specific reason why this hasn't been implemented in IPB? I know that there is a "social groups" mod but that really is something completely different and does not duplicate the functionality that exists in vB, phpBB, myBB (those are the ones I checked). EDIT: I found some more background about this on so I get that all I can do is wait for the feature or go ahead and migrate my board once more and go with vB if I want groups. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tsvi Posted October 3, 2012 Share Posted October 3, 2012 Just out of curiosity. What does it good for? What will you do exactly with a feature like that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Owdy Posted October 3, 2012 Author Share Posted October 3, 2012 I know that there is a "social groups" mod but that really is something completely different and does not duplicate the functionality that exists in vB, phpBB, myBB (those are the ones I checked). And SMF Id like to have this this feature too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reality Extractor Posted October 3, 2012 Share Posted October 3, 2012 Just out of curiosity. What does it good for? What will you do exactly with a feature like that? It's good for any board that has some overarching theme but then has groups of members who require a private area to discuss things among the group. In my case I operate a gaming forum where I offer private subforums for individual gaming clans. This is a great way to attract and retain active members. I add value to their clan by providing an area where they can discuss clan internal matters while they are at the same time participating in the public areas of the forum. It's a simple and effective way to add dozens if not hundreds of active users to your forum. The same could apply to any other topic that fits a similar layout, for example a little league forum with private sections for each team, a college forum with private sections for student organizations/clubs, any community that has committees that need to discuss things in private (i.e. fundraising committee). There are tons of applications for it and while I have read a lot of posts/threads about the lack of this feature in IPB I honestly cannot understand why it doesn't exist since it's standard in many other scripts. I like IPB, I just migrated to it, but I am considering to put my users through yet another migration and just buy vB because I need the groups to work. It's imho ridiculous that only admins can move users to another group. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolfie Posted October 3, 2012 Share Posted October 3, 2012 It's good for any board that has some overarching theme but then has groups of members who require a private area to discuss things among the group. In my case I operate a gaming forum where I offer private subforums for individual gaming clans. This is a great way to attract and retain active members. I add value to their clan by providing an area where they can discuss clan internal matters while they are at the same time participating in the public areas of the forum. It's a simple and effective way to add dozens if not hundreds of active users to your forum. The same could apply to any other topic that fits a similar layout, for example a little league forum with private sections for each team, a college forum with private sections for student organizations/clubs, any community that has committees that need to discuss things in private (i.e. fundraising committee). There are tons of applications for it and while I have read a lot of posts/threads about the lack of this feature in IPB I honestly cannot understand why it doesn't exist since it's standard in many other scripts.I see that this feature has been suggested as early as 2007. It's 2012 now and most viable competitors offer group memberships and the ability for users to apply to a group where a group leader (who is not an admin or a mod) approves the membership. Is there any specific reason why this hasn't been implemented in IPB? I know that there is a "social groups" mod but that really is something completely different and does not duplicate the functionality that exists in vB, phpBB, myBB (those are the ones I checked).Let's see.. Social Groups allows you to do that.. So how is it completely different? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reality Extractor Posted October 4, 2012 Share Posted October 4, 2012 Let's see.. Social Groups allows you to do that.. So how is it completely different? Not even sure where to begin ...., first off, the Social Groups mod does exactly what some people found to be a problem, it removes people from the actual forum and puts them into a social group silo (tab). At least that is what appears to be true from the screenshots that I have seen at http://community.inv...-social-groups/ In order to see social group content the user will need to leave the forum index. This is undesirable at best. In the other forum scripts the groups are merely used to grant access to non-public forums. However, the non-public forums still show up in the forum index when one has access. The whole point in offering groups and thus private forums is to increase overall activity on the forum, not to drive that activity away to a social group tab where the users will never actually see the forum index anymore. The second problem I see is "business continuity". Since group functionality comes standard with many forum scripts I can trust that the feature will remain supported. With the mod there are no assurances that it will be updated when a new IPB version comes out since it's just one guy maintaining it. If he loses interest and walks away the board that relies on this mod is screwed. While that's true for all mods it is, in my opinion, not good practice to install a mod that is essential to site operation. It's far better practice to simply buy a forum script that has the desired functionality as part of the core. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Owdy Posted October 4, 2012 Author Share Posted October 4, 2012 ...and "Note that SG 2.0.0 Beta 3 is a rough release and there will be bugs." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolfie Posted October 4, 2012 Share Posted October 4, 2012 Not even sure where to begin ...., first off, the Social Groups mod does exactly what some people found to be a problem, it removes people from the actual forum and puts them into a social group silo (tab). At least that is what appears to be true from the screenshots that I have seen at http://community.inv...-social-groups/ In order to see social group content the user will need to leave the forum index. This is undesirable at best. It's your opinion that it's "undesirable at best" and the reason you feel that way is because that's what you're used to. If you were used to it being separated, you'd consider it to be "undesirable at best" for it to be part of the regular forums. When people are used to something being a particular way, then more often than not, they don't like for it to be changed.The second problem I see is "business continuity". Since group functionality comes standard with many forum scripts I can trust that the feature will remain supported. With the mod there are no assurances that it will be updated when a new IPB version comes out since it's just one guy maintaining it. If he loses interest and walks away the board that relies on this mod is screwed. While that's true for all mods it is, in my opinion, not good practice to install a mod that is essential to site operation. It's far better practice to simply buy a forum script that has the desired functionality as part of the core.Just because it 'comes standard' with some other forum products, it doesn't mean that it's something that most or all should have as standard. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of 'member groups' or 'social groups' or whatever else you want to call it and I've been in favor of it being included at some point, but speaking objectively, just because "others do it" doesn't mean that everyone should. Not just with this function, but other functions as well. It really depends on the function as to whether or not it's truly crucial. My only concern with the Social Groups app available is that if something happens to the author, how would we know? My first concern would be in wanting to know what happened because he's a rather decent guy and I'd hate for this community to lose him (as a person that is). After that, the concern would be in wondering who would take it over and if that new author would do justice to the work that's already been done. Aside from that, in my opinion he's built a reputation for getting the work done and sticking to it. Someone else was originally going to do it but it soon turned into a joke because every few weeks there'd be an update postponing a release of (either a beta of the product or screenshots or whatever else). This functionality has been requested quite a lot and as I said before, I've been in favor of it for awhile now. Here's a topic with only a few posts, but includes one where I link to several other topics with the same request. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reality Extractor Posted October 4, 2012 Share Posted October 4, 2012 It's your opinion that it's "undesirable at best" and the reason you feel that way is because that's what you're used to. If you were used to it being separated, you'd consider it to be "undesirable at best" for it to be part of the regular forums. When people are used to something being a particular way, then more often than not, they don't like for it to be changed. This isn't a matter of being resistant to change. The Social Groups mod is fundamentally flawed because it segregates users which goes against everything forum owners, in my opinion, should strive for in running their forum. If you have a group feature, like most all forum scripts have, that allows you to set a particular forum as private but the forum remains part of your forum index, then the user in that group is inevitably exposed to the other content of the forum and is likely to participate in it. With the Social Groups mod you get a group that has basically nothing at all to do with the forum other than sharing the login information. It's entirely possible, and very likely, that a user will only log into the social group and will contribute zero to the overall forum. Why should (s)he if all the people (s)he wants to associate with are present in the social group. I as forum owner gain nothing because my users are compartmentalized and are creating private content that doesn't help my forum grow. For that reason I wouldn't use the Social Groups mod if you were to pay me to use it.Just because it 'comes standard' with some other forum products, it doesn't mean that it's something that most or all should have as standard. Not sure how that fits into this discussion. Clearly other scripts, free and commercial, have included this feature across the board. Many different dev teams that have nothing to do with each other looked at it and decided that it would be a good idea to include it. Users have been asking IPB for years (literally!) to include it yet nothing happens. Someone who asked for it in 2007 isn't going to be here still advocating for it today. Forum owners have no recourse other than to just move on, try to sell their IPB license and chalk it up to not having done their due diligence when moving to IPB. To be clear, I don't blame IPS for my mistake in not checking this more thoroughly before buying IPB and then converting to it. The reason why my forum is now lacking a feature that is crucial to my community is because I didn't pay attention. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marcher Technologies Posted October 4, 2012 Share Posted October 4, 2012 It's imho ridiculous that only admins can move users to another group. You don't want 'social groups', not *really*, you want this^ resolved in a sane manner, and that is all, no? Obviously there has to be sane limitations on what groups are involved, but you basically want to give specific users the ability to invite/accept invitations to their group, correct? 'Social Groups' as the very meaning is completely different, and does in fact require a separate area for the group not a 'forum'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marcher Technologies Posted October 4, 2012 Share Posted October 4, 2012 I take it like==yes.... got a client in a bad spot where he is basically forced to grant acp access for reasons similar to this, as such I work on a mod to do that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reality Extractor Posted October 4, 2012 Share Posted October 4, 2012 You don't want 'social groups', not *really*, you want this^ resolved in a sane manner, and that is all, no? Obviously there has to be sane limitations on what groups are involved, but you basically want to give specific users the ability to invite/accept invitations to their group, correct? Exactly, I definitely do not what social groups. I merely mentioned those in on of my posts because that seems to be the standard response to a thread asking about the group join/accept feature present in other scripts. This is how it works elsewhere: Brilliant. I'd be willing to financially contribute, let me know. [*]A user accesses a list of publicly available member groups. [*]The user picks a group he wants to join and applies to that group. [*]A group leader (who is not a mod or admin on the forum) receives the requests and approves/denies it. [*]If the request is approved then the user now has access to a sub-forum that was previously hidden. [*]Done I take it like==yes.... got a client in a bad spot where he is basically forced to grant acp access for reasons similar to this, as such I work on a mod to do that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolfie Posted October 4, 2012 Share Posted October 4, 2012 Not sure how that fits into this discussion. Clearly other scripts, free and commercial, have included this feature across the board.You're joking right? You talk about how some other platforms include it as a standard and when I make a comment on it, you can't see how it fits into the discussion while in the same breath making the same point again? Yeah okay, whatever you say.This is how it works elsewhere: [*]A user accesses a list of publicly available member groups. [*]The user picks a group he wants to join and applies to that group. [*]A group leader (who is not a mod or admin on the forum) receives the requests and approves/denies it. [*]If the request is approved then the user now has access to a sub-forum that was previously hidden. [*]DoneYou more or less just described the Social Groups application. Just because it's not using the same name of "Member Groups" doesn't mean it's extremely different. That's like the words clockwise and counterclockwise aren't related because one has the letter 't' in it and the other doesn't. Tell me what's different from what a member applying to be part of a group and a member applying to be part of a group. Maybe then I'll understand the difference here because as it is, you're still describing 'Social Groups', but you think it's different because it's not called 'Member Groups' or something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marcher Technologies Posted October 4, 2012 Share Posted October 4, 2012 You're joking right? You talk about how some other platforms include it as a standard and when I make a comment on it, you can't see how it fits into the discussion while in the same breath making the same point again? Yeah okay, whatever you say. You more or less just described the Social Groups application. Just because it's not using the same name of "Member Groups" doesn't mean it's extremely different. That's like the words clockwise and counterclockwise aren't related because one has the letter 't' in it and the other doesn't. Tell me what's different from what a member applying to be part of a group and a member applying to be part of a group. Maybe then I'll understand the difference here because as it is, you're still describing 'Social Groups', but you think it's different because it's not called 'Member Groups' or something. He doesn't want the stovepipe of a separate app, with a completely separate listing/area of discussion, SG is overkill for all he wants(I say this having developed an addon or two for it). He very simply wants select users to be able to add their primary group to another user as a secondary without admin intervention, same as my client, the thorn for him, and my client *is* the acp access requirement to manage member groups, and no more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Owdy Posted October 4, 2012 Author Share Posted October 4, 2012 You more or less just described the Social Groups application. Its BETA software and it isnt part of offical software. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marcher Technologies Posted October 4, 2012 Share Posted October 4, 2012 Its BETA software and it isn't part of official software. You, make my head nearly pop..... suffice it to say, if 'official' is all you will use, your goal must be to stuck everything *you* want, regardless of bloat, into the core. Some things, in fact many, are unused and unwanted by many, and as a point of topic(in fact fairly proven by this topic), the implementation x admin desires from a 'Social Groups' app/mod varies incredibly widely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Owdy Posted October 4, 2012 Author Share Posted October 4, 2012 suffice it to say, if 'official' is all you will use, Didnt say that. Please dont put words in my mouth. Why you are so mad? Take a chill pill or something. I dont want to use beta software wich i dont know if it still be there in next year. This is popular feature used in most of popular bb-software. Its isnt just because i want it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolfie Posted October 4, 2012 Share Posted October 4, 2012 Its BETA software and it isnt part of offical software.And your point is... what exactly? The current version is beta but it has had 'final' releases in previous versions. And who cares if it's not part of the "official" software? Not everyone wants everything (including the kitchen sink) to be part of the core product or the other IPS applications. There's a Garage (3rd party) app that I doubt I'd ever make use of. Using your way of thinking, it shouldn't exist despite the fact that it does because people (other than myself) want and use something like that. It fits their needs, which is the purpose of making 3rd party apps and mods, as it lets IPS focus on core needs of the apps they have decided to market.You, make my head nearly pop..... suffice it to say, if 'official' is all you will use, your goal must be to stuck everything *you* want, regardless of bloat, into the core.Some would argue that there already is bloat in the software, so this would only make it worse. Very good point.I dont want to use beta software wich i dont know if it still be there in next year. This is popular feature used in most of popular bb-software. Its isnt just because i want it.It's version 2 that's in beta, not version 1 or "pre" version 1. The fact that it hasn't been updated in a few months tells me that for the most part, it's likely bug free or any bugs found haven't been important enough to warrant an update yet. The author had a good reputation before making the SG app and I believe has only improved his rep because of it. So relax some. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bfarber Posted October 4, 2012 Share Posted October 4, 2012 Guys, let's keep it civil please. Clearly some users have a desire for such functionality and some don't - we don't want to have to start cleaning up posts in this topic if everyone can't agree to disagree. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rimi Posted October 4, 2012 Share Posted October 4, 2012 I disagree. Uh. Not with brandon lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolfie Posted October 5, 2012 Share Posted October 5, 2012 Guys, let's keep it civil please. Clearly some users have a desire for such functionality and some don't - we don't want to have to start cleaning up posts in this topic if everyone can't agree to disagree.I personally would like to have it be built in, but until then, I believe that the requested functionality is available from the 3rd party app. Did you at one point say that you'd like to make one, or was that another developer? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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