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Well this sounds like somewhat of an easy idea guys. the process may not be simple but the idea is.
The groups system is almost adequate at this stage. you can place user in specific groups and members of that group can only see what they are intended to see. The flaw in the system is that if you set up someone as a group moderator and give them administrative access to the groups function they have admin over not only what their group sees, but what all the other groups see. Not to mention the ability to change the areas of the site that they are intended to see.
Solution: Hack the group feature so that the admin sets up a group and a moderator for that group. Then the admin must approve all of the area that that particualar group is able to see. Now when the moderatator logs in he can only see what he is intended to see. The concept of being able to divvy up administrative responsibility is brilliant. However being able to partition that responsibility as needed would be ideal.
Stage 2 of this would be that application to a specific group. xroster has a very nice application that could be modded out to work in this case. Not that it ever really worked, but nows as good a time as any. When a user registers for your domain they are immediattely redirected to the application. at this point they can either apply to a group or they can remain as just a registered user. If they do apply to a group then the application goes to the moderator of that group and awaits approval. Once approved the moderator can pull that member out of the registered users group and place them in their own.
Something that may cause trouble. Moderators of certain groups can only see members in their group as well as registered users. This way noone can be pulled out of a group on accident or out of spite for that matter.
Once a member has been grouped the new member list page would display them in the appropriatte group.
This doesnt seem too bizaar and i feel that it isnt very unreasonable and in my opinion it sounds like an adequate solution to the question.