This is a task we got funding from Nlnet to be working on this year…
We will allow groups to create custom roles, configure them as they wish and support multiple methods by which people get a new role. In addition to getting a role by receiving trust from their fellow members, some roles are suitable for self-assignment. To make these more useful, it will be necessary to break apart the “editor” role into a flexible set of permissions, which can then be assigned to roles as the group desires, e.g. “manage group”, “manage places”, “manage activities”, “manage applications”, “start membership review”
Roles (that can act as pariticpant type): I click “add participant types” and can select predefined roles with the description already included… and add additional information if there is something special for that role. eg. cargo Rider: We need resuced veggies, no bread needed!
Seems to me that in this case an editor could create a role at the moment of creating an activity and adding a participant type, and that the role would be self-assigned and not necessarily have any kind of limitation or permission system.
Most of the pickups we mostly struggle to find people to do are the ones that require a car. There’s a lot of writing on the wall asking who can make such pickups on a short notice and one of the person that writes and is responsible for seeking people expressed the wish to know about everyone that has a car so she could write them more directly and not a wall message that goes out to everyone.
I think that self-assigned custom roles would make sense here, and if on top of that there is possibility of messaging the people with a particular role, then it would be very useful for the issue above. That also touches upon the question of sub-groups (would people with a role constitute a sub-group?)