Last weekend, though, while browsing the Macworld forums, I came across a post that contained an amazingly easy alternative solution -- one that inspired one of those "D'oh! Why didn't I think of that?" reactions. On the machine that you want to use as the shared file server (it could be a standalone Mac, or even another user's Mac, if the group is small and the workload not too heavy), create a new non-adminstrative account (name it Workgroup or whatever). Login to the new account, and create the folder structure you'd like the users to see, and copy any files to the server that the users will need to access.
As the last step, share the login name and password for that account with the users in the workgroup. Set up each member of the workgroup to connect to the shared Mac using the special shared account, and you won't have any permissions issues at all -- since everyone will be logged in as the same user, everyone will be able to create, delete, and modify files at will.
There are obviously some downsides to this method. There's no ability to see which files and folders were created or modified by which users. If someone leaves the group, you'll probably want to change the account's password, which will require redoing the connections for the other users. You can't implement fine levels of control over which workgroup users can modify which files and folders. I'm sure there are more downsides, but for a workgroup with simple sharing needs, this solution should work just fine. Or have I overlooked some major issue that would prevent this from being a viable simple file server solution?

