Members cant request to join new group

I don't know about the way it is now but it use to be that members could request to join a group that is open. Any one that is not a member of a group cant not request it. That's kind of frustrated . Has it changed recently? I have one group that has about 4 pending members request so I know that part is working. Can some one explain this.

Go to the bottom of the page click a group, and if that group is a open group, the user will have the option to "request to join"

you have to add them to the group it's always been like this.
you can have it as an open group for member to join/request to be in the group. but you will have to approve them and add them to the group manually.

I know I have to approved them once they have put in a request. They just can't request. We get the :

Error "You have no rights to access this page."

Error

You haven't got the rights to access this page

This is what they get when they try to do a request to a group and the group is open.