Matthew,
Thanks for the explanation. I can see why this is not a trivial decision. I think my discomfort stems from something that is neatly summed up by a statement from the previous posting:
"all parties are part of the group registered users (-2), this can be a person who is not a user"
The idea that a party that is not a registered user can be part of the group 'registered users' seems undesirable to me.
In fact if you consider the case where a party is a group of groups, there may not be any registered users amongst them. I think that if contacts treats the party objects in this way then there is a real chance that in the future a single set of relationships may produce different behaviour in different packages.
Regards
Richard
