Add member invitation to request membership group

[Kristina Hoeppner]

In Mahara we separate groups into open, invite and request membership groups (plus controlled course group). Having used groups a bit more in the last few weeks on MyPortfolio, I run into problems with invite and request groups because often a group is an invite only group that I am supposed to join, but can't because I can't send a request to be added. The group admin often doesn't know who wants to join, but wants to send out invitations in the beginning to encourage people to join.

That would mean that he needs to create the group as invite only group at first, invite people and then change the group type to request membership so that others can ask to be added to the group. I am wondering if we cannot role these two group types for standard groups into one as it is still always up to the admin(s) to add people. However, if we had just one group type, it would be easy to invite people as well as allow for requests to be made.

If these group types shall continue to co-exist, I would suggest to add to the request group that users can be invited like in the invite only group.

This is similar to bug 610690 and should be tackled together.