Minutes
Robert Guthrie PublicSeen by 20This context panel is misunderstood. Most of the time is is used as a first comment, in which case the first comment would be a better place to put that stuff.
We talked about trying to make it clearer what the purpose of the context panel was. Those things included:
A TLDR - a summary of the discussion for people who don't wanna read the whole thing
A shared understanding of the discussion.
I've realised that the normal way people do this is by taking minutes of a meeting, and then people approve the minutes as a fair account of the meeting.
So my thoughts are that we remove the context panel, and bring in a minutes panel, as the discussion progresses minutes are taken by anyone following the discussion, when the discussion ends (another feature) approving the minutes is done via a proposal.
Now imagine you want to catch up on discussions with a limited amount of time - you can read the minutes of a discussion... you might get a weekly minutes digest of the discussions on loomio.
I personally love this because we're adopting a well understood metaphor and reincorporating proposals to approve them.
Now that I've abused the context panel for my first comment.. what do you think about this, Loomiods?
I really like the thinking behind this, but I'm wondering how it will read visually. I'm not sure how I feel about a third panel. If we're going to implement this, let's try to re-envision the panels so it won't be cluttered.
I actually think the context panel is really good as is. I don't think it's an abuse to have the first comment posted at the top of the thread as it is the 'provocation' for the discussion and it used to really suck when it was at the bottom of the thread and you had to read upwards.
I do think the idea of minutes is cool though and wouldn't mind playing around with a minutes panel.
@robertguthrie can you show us the mockup you were playing with?
As I recall there were some other changes not mentioned: a) the chronology of comments would be reversed (first comment at the top of the page) and b) the page would automatically scroll to the latest unread comments for returning users.
The context panel (discussion info?) is a description of the discussion subject and forms the basis of all following discussion. This can be edited by any member to more accurately portray the context. Minutes on the other hand are a record of the meeting. Perhaps the context panel should have a link to the minutes, giving the user access to a "minutes panel" which pops up in front of the context panel until removed.
I'd suggest having two panels in the minutes popup, an editable panel for recording minutes and a decision panel for approving the minutes.
The minutes panel would need to hold approved minutes in "time series" and the current draft minutes. The decision panel would support approval of each "proposed" minutes. So when a participant deems the current draft minutes complete he or she makes a proposal to "accept these minutes". From that point the minutes can't be changed until the decision closes. If rejected they could be further edited to then be proposed again.
Having minutes recorded is also good for record keeping...
I also think it's important to recall that unlike a first comment, the context panel changes over time. I like that. The context for the beginning of a discussion often is most appropriately the first comment, because there's nothing else to go on yet and it takes time for the discussion to evolve. Maybe we just need some visual cue to remind people to update the context as the discussion progresses.
@robertguthrie I dont have too much to add right now, except that I like it a lot. Nice work!