Removing the 'friends' option

I have an earlier post about this subject that asks for opinions. Since I didn't get any reasonable responses I guess the next question needs to be asked.

How big a task will it be to strip my Dolphin site of the 'friends' capabilities? I want all members to be visible to all other members.

don't know if this will help any in admin there's the privacy settings disable all but the public option

option 2:would be to strip out the friend  future/section from the script but once u run  upgrade it'll bring it back

I already have an admin/friend mod. I wonder if the same concept could be applied to members? That would work ok. Once you join and are approved, you become everyone's friend.

In fact, that might be the best option as it wouldn't require changing any of the base code...

Wow who   that would be murder on the database for sure...   all those IDs geting add to the friends profile field over and over.   Then the call to the database to get all those ids on a profile view.  To me that equals a bad idea but cool concept. 

At the same time i could be completely wrong.        So am i ever going to build that towing mod for dolphin or what  :)

I'm certainly open for a better way, lol.

Yes, we will be building the towing site very soon. My plate has been very full lately and I haven't had time to organize the project.

Now that I'm back in the game with 7.03, I am back to asking all the questions I did the last time around.

I think the friends option is going to be the killer of smaller Dolphin sites. Having a 'friends' security system in place is great for sites like Facebook that have 28 gazillion members but smaller sites are going to struggle with an impression of inactivity to new members that join.

A small site that requires you to make friends to communicate with anyone is going to be a desolate place indeed. I already see the issues in my townation site and now, my newest venture for usspeedwayseries.com is really struggling.

Most sites I go to are topic specific. That means, everyone is there because they already have something in common, be it towing or racing or whatever. Making the site locked down like Fort Knox in these situations doesn't help the site or the members. There are already tons of other ways to provide the necessary intersite security. Not every Dolphin script sold (or given away) is going to be a dating site.

I need to find a way to effectively disable the entire friends feature without crippling the site. I think this is one thing that needs to be completely configurable by the admin on the fly including a way to just completely turn it off.