Loomio
Wed 28 Aug 2013 3:58PM

Participate only in sub-groups and not in main groups

CT Chris Taklis Public Seen by 143

Is this possible to invite people to be members only in sub-group and not be members in main group???

RJ

Raphaël Jadot Wed 28 Aug 2013 9:16PM

Apparently not :p (i'm a simple user, maybe i missed something) is it for avoiding sub-groups to meet?

RDB

Richard D. Bartlett Wed 28 Aug 2013 11:34PM

@christaklis it's not possible at the moment, no.

One of the thing we talked about at our design day last week is that the whole group/subgroup structure is not working particularly well. We're working on some ideas to make groups much more flexible and responsive to different use-cases.

Personally, I think the idea that one group is 'inside' another group is probably doing more harm than good at this point.

CT

Chris Taklis Thu 29 Aug 2013 6:58AM

@richarddbartlett, the subgroups I see it as categories (like in a forum). But it will be more useful if someone can participate in subgroup and not in main group. Think you need help with some coding and you want a friend to participate. Only in this subgroup and not general in main group discussion and decisions.

TL

Tom Lord Thu 29 Aug 2013 11:19AM

I'm interested to hear what the issues you're seeing are with the current simple structure.

We're just talking about this, and the immediate options seem to be to either do something simply hierarchical, as Loomio has, or to create the permissions cloud from hell for defining more complex relationships between groups :-)

Maybe we'll go down the latter path... Can't wait to see if it can be made oh-so user-friendly! :-) We recently implemented PHPBB for some clients, and looking at their interface(s) for implementing multi-layered permissions makes my eyes bleed...

RDB

Richard D. Bartlett Sun 22 Sep 2013 11:39PM

@tomlord the main issue for me is that it is a pain to invite someone to a subgroup, because they have to be a member of the parent group first. From a user experience point of view, that's a totally arbitrary constraint. I think the solution is to make all groups equal, and just come up with some way of linking groups together into an organisation.

Also a better contact-management system would help with this: if you could add people by their names rather than their email addresses that would make group formation cheaper.

AI

Alanna Irving Mon 23 Sep 2013 12:30AM

We've talked about a future vision for Loomio where you could just grab whoever you want to be part of a discussion, whether that means individuals (who are already Loomio users or not), other Loomio groups, etc. I think we'll achieve this vision someday, but it's going to mean big changes to the way Loomio is structured and that will take time. I agree with the concept though! The right people to have in a given decision is a dynamically changing thing.

JL

Jon Lemmon Mon 23 Sep 2013 9:19AM

@christaklis just so you know, this feature is on our roadmap to change this within the next month. So soon you should be able to add anyone to sub-groups.

CT

Chris Taklis Mon 23 Sep 2013 9:21AM

thank you @jonlemmon. it is great to have members in sub-groups that are not in main group....

thanks again...

MS

Marcos Siqueira Fri 22 Nov 2013 2:43AM

Hi guys, I am new to the group here so please bear with me as I try to board a moving train.... In another project of mine I actually tried to move towards a "permissions cloud from hell" that @tomlord talked about and it did make it very complex for users. One way we sort of dealt with this was to have simple-to-understand user levels (eg. team leader, coalition captain, etc), so that as you go up and down the subgroup hierarchy you get different permissions (for voting, posting and viewing).

One question that arises in cutting off subgroups is this: how does the subgroup participate in the main group? We had a voted representative play that role (of participating in the big league), but there are other options...

@jonlemmon I would be curious as to how you guys solved that problem