Thanks Dan — your point about category moderators being able to own a group tied to their category really resonates. It seems like you’re imagining a more flexible admin structure where one group can manage another group — and that could go a long way in streamlining permissions and workflows.
Right now, Discourse only allows individual users to be group owners. But in real-world use cases, especially structured communities (like schools, departments, or teams), we often want to say:
- “Group A (e.g.
mentor-coordinators) can manage Group B (e.g.mentors)” - …without members of A being added to B or inheriting its badge/identity
That would allow:
- Clean separation between identity (group membership) and control (group ownership)
- Delegation of membership management (invite/remove/approve) without giving sitewide admin or moderator access
- The ability to tie moderation of a category to the group that controls its posting group
It sounds like you’re pointing toward a model where group ownership accepts not just usernames, but other groups. This idea aligns with a few older threads:
- “Group owners should not necessarily be group members”
- “Members of one group appointing and removing members of another group”
- “Allow another Group be assigned as Owner”
I’d be curious how you’d imagine this working:
- Would the UI expose ownership inheritance if I’m in the managing group?
- Should the group owner be allowed to edit all group settings, or just manage membership?
- Could this pair with category permissions or auto-link to a group’s category?
Definitely support the idea — would love to see this developed further.