Agreed it is confusing. On the community site groups have to serve as top level categories, but since groups do a bunch of other things, the UX is bad. I.e. once in the group profile you must dig for the active topics, and you must first join each group to post. Groups are much better for modeling teams within an office/org. The only advantage is that your notification settings can differ between groups.

A simple improvement would be to have a global page that listed the groups, but the items pointed directly to the group discussion pages instead of the group profiles. And to eliminate the silly requirement to join the group before posting.

the site-wide categories is another aspect to this. i was already partway through writing a detailed view of these issues.. i will add it soon to the feedback/planning group.

Or add a link to 'start' a topic in the top of the groups page?

Rodolfo Hernandez

Arvixe/Elgg Community Liaison