I think (not sure) that I disagree with what he's saying. Groups seems like a product designed to be as easy and obvious to use as possible - all these confounding features would make it harder to use for a large number of people.

It seems like they want something more built-for-purpose - perhaps a mailing list, or even a bulletin board - and I'm not sure Facebook should compromise the usability of their product for a niche use like this.

So, I agree that this may complicate the experience depending on how it's implemented, but as I mention in the post, if you're not a power user and don't want to see all of this - FB could maybe place a switch in group settings that could turn all of these extra features on. Features like moderators, tags, can easily be ignored if you don't need/use them.

Or they could get turned on based on need - community size, traffic, etc.

A lot of the features you mention sound like old listservs and mailing lists (moderators, archives, searches). And the rest sound like a wordpress blog (archives, tags). It would great to see the perfect combination of all those features in Groups. I barely use them now for how clunky they are.

Exactly! When I was telling me friend about the post he kept saying "that sounds like a forum." But I guess the point here is, Facebook can maintain that great casual social network feel and still make Groups a lot more powerful than it already is.

I feel like Groups wouldn't be an app worth downloading unless you were a heavy user of that feature, which is not most people and therefore a dud by default

I could be wrong, but isn't this what they're trying to do with rooms?

I was hoping Rooms was one step in that direction, but I'm pretty sure they're treating it as a separate product, given how you can also stay anonymous etc.