Group Invites should show all members when friends is disabled

[PeterAnselmo]

Currently, if the friends component is disabled, there is no way for people join hidden groups. They can't voluntarily join (as it's hidden) and the group moderator can't invite them (no friends list).

Although the people are at least able to join private & public groups, currently there is no way for the moderator to invite members to them as well.

[ubernaut]

i see this too.

[boonebgorges]

See some discussion in #5536.

The friends-only restriction has become more of a pressing issue now that we're no longer activating the Friends component for new installations. I'm moving this to 2.1 so we can try to improve the workflow here.

See also #5421 for more discussion of this interface.

[Azinfiro]

boonebgorges, can you please elaborate on your first point in your reply to #5536?

1. The admin pages do not display a checklist of available members, only the auto-complete field, correct?

2. Would the auto-complete field by itself generate stress on the system if the friends-only restriction were to be lifted? If not, wouldn't this be a acceptable solution to the problem?

Regarding your second point, it is my assessment that the decision to withhold a feature in fear of it being abused should come down to the extent of such abuse. Wouldn't it be a better call to leave it to moderators to sanction abuse, or the administrators to disable the feature on an individual basis?

Alternatively, you could allow users to block group invitations, similar to what facebook does.

I also want to point out that it is also not possible to invite members to a group from the members page. To me, it would seem intuitive to be able to do this.

[boonebgorges]

can you please elaborate on your first point in your reply to #5536?

I think that removing the checkboxes when the site gets to a certain size is probably (part of) the correct solution. Auto-complete on large sites still causes stress, but less so than rendering thousands of checkboxes. In any case, I'm not dismissing these solutions, just explaining the current state of affairs.

Wouldn't it be a better call to leave it to moderators to sanction abuse, or the administrators to disable the feature on an individual basis?

We aim to build features that will cover 90% of use cases in their default configurations, and we try to avoid excessive UI for customizing these settings. You may be correct that it won't be a problem 90% of the time; that's a subject for discussion. Again, I wasn't dismissing, just explaining the things are currently.

I also want to point out that it is also not possible to invite members to a group from the members page. To me, it would seem intuitive to be able to do this.

Yes. This was your other request in #5536. As I note there, there are many UX questions to discuss.

[Azinfiro]

I understand and appreciate that you're not dismissing the solutions.

This was your other request in #5536.

I didn't mean the individual member pages, but the member list. Sorry about the confusion.

[Azinfiro]

I just installed the plugin ​Invite Anyone and noticed that it allows you to limit the number of invites a user can send.

Limits per user, like this, or limits per invitation session are other ways to deal with the issue of people being able to spam invitations.

[DJPaul]

@dcavins Any opinions on this old ticket?

[DJPaul]

We're closing this ticket because it has not received any contribution or comments for at least two years. We have decided that it is better to close tickets that are good ideas, which have not gotten (or are unlikely to get) contributions, rather than keep things open indefinitely. This will help us share a more realistic roadmap for BuddyPress with you.

Everyone very much appreciates the time and effort that you spent sharing your idea with us. On behalf of the entire BuddyPress team, thank you.

If you feel strongly that this enhancement should still be added to BuddyPress, and you are able to contribute effort towards it, we encourage you to re-open the ticket, or start a discussion about it in our Slack channel. Please consider that time has proven that good ideas without contributions do not get built.

For more information, see ​https://bpdevel.wordpress.com/2018/01/21/our-awaiting-contributions-milestone-contains/
or find us on Slack, in the #buddypress channel: ​https://make.wordpress.org/chat/