Group owners should not necessarily be group members

Feature
22

I think adding group owners could be done mostly as it is now except add the ability to @group add as owner.

The core benefit is that owners group will have their own owner most likely just a member or two.

To keep things clean a sanity check might be that only 1 level deep for ownership

Ie Group A owns group B and is considered members of both groups

Now if we add group C and is owned by Group B. Group B is owner of Group C. While Group A owns Group B. Group A is only considered a member of Group C but has no ownship privileges.

Or for stricter confines. A group can only own or be owned by 1 group. So if A owns B, A cannot be owned by another group or be owners of another group. Though maybe being able to own more than one group would work with stipulation Owner Groups cannot be owned by another group. Maybe at least without using a site setting similar to subcategory nesting level

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23

Really appreciate the clarification, Dan — limiting group-to-group ownership to one level deep makes a lot of sense for maintainability and avoiding privilege creep.

I like the idea that:

  • Group A owns Group B → members of A get owner rights on B
  • Group B owns Group C → members of B get owner rights on C
  • But Group A is not an owner of C — only transitively a member (not manager)

That helps avoid infinite nesting while still supporting useful delegation structures.

Also agree that limiting ownership depth via a group_ownership_nesting_level setting (like subcategory nesting) gives sites flexibility — maybe default to 1, but allow opt-in to deeper control if needed.

A few clarifying questions I had:

  • In your model, should the owning group appear as a member of the owned group in the group directory UI? Or is the membership purely permission-based?
  • If a group has multiple owners (some users, some groups), how do you see conflict or redundancy being resolved in the UI?
  • Would ownership affect category permissions at all (e.g. could the owner group manage the category tied to the owned group)?

This would open up a lot of flexibility in education, org, or project-based forums — thanks for keeping the idea moving!

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