No decisions without threads?

I found that ability quite useful when I had to create a bunch of polls to support an online discussion - the discussion was happening in real-time over voice and video so there was little context needed. I also loved that I could use a search to create a link directly to all the polls without having to create a discussion.

In short I love that your can break apart the toolset and use it in different ways.

One of the things on our roadmap for the near term future is to allow for discussions which are separate from groups, which will allow you to have

• just a poll, which can quickly gather thoughts
• a discussion (which can have polls), which can involve informal group of people to discuss and decide
• a group (which can have discussions and polls), which can involve a set or relatively static group of people to make decisions together consistently over time.

We'll also (at some stage) provide an easy way to move between these modes, so that you can 'escalate' how formal your grouping of people is when it feels appropriate.

I don't know what the solution is - but I want to completely +1 the original poster. I have encountered the scenario of someone starting a really important proposal via Loomio - outside of a context thread - and then having to backtrack and either delete and start again. Or set up a new thread just for comments.

It breaks the flow a lot - and often means some people engage on the thread, others via the comment in their vote... etc.

I doubt the solution is to get rid of solo proposals (which can be useful) - but there's a potential design issue if people who intend on starting a proposal alongside comments, accidentally create these standalone proposals...

I think that attaching Loomio proposals to external discussions is extremely valuable. However, it's important IMO to directly hyperlink such proposals to their related discussions.

It's certainly important to make navigation as clear and efficient as possible. That may include steps to reduce the risk that people will unintentionally create new proposals which are not attached to their intended discussion context.

Something as simple as the equivalent of 'are you sure you want to create a standalone proposal'.... or perhaps you guys can think of something more elegant. :P

Thanks to everyone here for sharing their views with the intent to help improve Loomio. From my position as a Loomio developer and support person I certainly have seen many occasions where people have accidentally created a decision outside of a thread and it's caused issues.

I think we've learned a tremendous amount since we launched the feature to run stand alone polls.

I would say that I've leaned that Loomio groups don't get value from decisions outside of threads, but individuals can, especially as a way to bring Loomio into another external tool.

I think we should consider removing stand-alone decisions from the group page, and keep them available for individuals wanting to use them with people outside of a Loomio group - and make it clear that this is the use case when you start one.

What about a button that could create a new discussion thread to go with a standalone poll? I can imagine cases where an informal straw poll - which a user assumes will be uncontroversial - reveals a more complicated issue requiring deeper discussion. Being able to then create a thread to go with the poll (the reverse of the traditional 'launch thread > create poll' workflow) would also deal with cases of new users not realizing they actually wanted to create a discussion.

Another solution could be to tweak the language, where 'create decision' launches a new discussion thread, and 'create poll' launches a stand-alone poll, but I can see how that would also confuse users familiar with the existing terminology.

Yea great idea. We're working towards stand-alone threads, which is what you'd need before you could do this... then attach poll to thread would be relatively straight forward

Update: We've removed the "new decision" button from the group decisions page, so it's not possible to start a decision within a group, without a thread.

Robert, that is great, on Sunday I spent 10 minutes trying to find it though. Is there a way to tell people on the page that it is removed

We don't usually communicate small changes like this, but I'm open to the idea that we should, but I'm not sure what the right format is. I don't think we need to popup on everyone's screen. What format would you like to see?

I'd say that we've gotten a good amount of feedback that this is a less small change than we're making it out to be; a bunch of people miss the ability to have quick polls associated with groups, and have these decisions appear in their list of decisions for the group.

I'm still of the camp that we put the button back, maybe with a warning on the poll form as you're creating it, and add an option to spawn a thread in the group based off the decision if people want that to happen - removing functionality is rarely the way to go, especially when a bunch of folks say 'hey I was using that' immediately after we do it.

I'm not sure! Here I see someone saying they missed it because it was there before - but agreeing that it's a good idea to remove it.

I'm not strictly against it.. but I think we can do better.

Personally I'm still in favour of everything within the group having a thread that holds related information and activities together. It sounds nice a simple and I want Loomio to feel that simple - that the app is built to guide you into good facilitation practice.

But I do recognise that there are times when that isn't what people want to do. So If we can assign polls to threads after they're created, and warn people starting a poll without a thread (ie: first use modal), then I'm ok with adding it back in for now if you feel super strongly about it.

Perhaps... take a poll?

I posted that a bit more in reaction to this issue raised today:
https://github.com/loomio/loomio/issues/4573

Which is someone suggesting, seemingly without any context, that we have the button that we just took out a week ago, in the exact spot we had it before... which says to me it's definitely missing. I get the feeling we can hammer out the exact inner workings of the behavior of that button, but that it really, really wants to be there.

Hi Robert, thanks for asking about what we want to see. There is an assumption that a decision cannot be made without a thread. However, our board met via Zoom link last week and discussed everything, then I went to make a poll of all the things we had agreed so that we had a record of our decisions. This meets the needs of some of our people who like to converse about decisions (unlike me who prefers online). So buttons for "Standalone Poll" and "Poll with thread" might be a way to go? I can work round now I know but others might be like me and hunting for it. BTW, this is such a great tool and the team have done a great job with it, this is just a flea bite in the scheme of things.

Thanks for the kind words. And thanks for sticking around in here and helping to make it better.

I think adding the button back, with the ability to attach the decision to a thread afterwards is my preference for the short term.

Long term I want to research changing the UX so it feels the same to start a thread or a poll. Dunno if that's going to work out but I want to try it.

Thanks @robertguthrie. The change is helpful.

I think it also prevents another problem I ran into. I created a decision in my main group without a corresponding thread and then added a subgroup later that was a more appropriate place to store that decision. There is an option to move threads to new groups - which will also move decisions associated with those threads - but there is no option to move a decision that has a group but not a thread to a different group/subgroup.

I wish I could move that decision to the right location. That said, at least I can no longer create new decisions with groups but no threads.

I have to confess though, I was really confused by the "Add Decision" option under on the "Decisions" screen.

If I click on "Decisions" I wind up on a screen that shows me all of the decisions in my company group and subgroups and also all of the decisions in this Loomio Community - Product Development group. I now realize it also shows Decisions that I've created that may not be shared with any group or associated with any thread.

I was super confused that when I clicked on "Add Decision" and it didn't immediately give me the option to choose a thread or a group. I was worried that by clicking "Next" after choosing the decision type and filling in the details it might spam people in all groups I belong to. It was surprising to me that the sharing options appeared only on the third page - and also that you could choose not to share at all at first, and then share later.

This seems quite different from the way threads work. If I click on "+ New Thread" it immediately asks me to choose a group. When I choose a group I know who will be part of the thread.

So, while it seems valuable for individuals to be able to create stand-alone decisions in some cases like @jobooth described, for companies primarily interacting through groups, the way this is presented in the UI seems confusing and even a bit scary. Perhaps simply having the decision sharing options screen come up first - together with a mention that you can choose your sharing later if desired - would make things less confusing/scary and more clear.

Another point of confusion for me is, on this same Decisions screen I have the option to filter decisions by group - but for some reason I don't seem to have the option to filter to show the decisions in this Product Development subgroup. I only see my company group and subgroups in the dropdown. Is this because I'm not a member of the main "Loomio Community" group? Or because decisions are disabled for this group? Or is there some other reason?

I also don't seem to have the option to show only decisions from my company group and all subgroups. This makes it hard for me to be a member of outside groups since I have no easy way to just see a summary of all my company-related decisions and exclude those that aren't company-related. I unsubscribed myself from this group to clear up the clutter - but of course that isn't ideal.

Seems my question / suggestion has caused some controversy. Obviously there are use cases where a decision without a thread makes sense. Maybe we just need more flexibility to accommodate all use cases and to ensure people don't wind up painted into a corner.

I'd suggest the items below be considered.

Decision and thread creation:

1. Allow a decision to be created without being associated with any group or any thread - with sharing to be decided later (already possible)
2. Allow a decision to be created with a group for sharing but without a thread (as before)
3. Allow a decision to be created within a thread which is in turn part of a group (already possible)

Decision sharing and thread creation:
4. Allow a decision without any group and without any thread to be added to a group (already possible with sharing options)
5. Allow a decision that has a group but doesn't have a thread to be added to a newly created thread in the associated group. (new)
6. Allow a decision without any group and without any thread to be added to a newly created thread in a specified group. (new)
7. Allow a decision with a group but no thread to be added to an existing thread in the same group (new)
8. Allow a decision without any group and without any thread to be added to an existing thread in a selected group (new)
9. Allow a decision with a thread to be removed from the thread, leaving it associated with the group. (new)
10. Allow a decision with a group but no thread to be removed from the group. (new)

Also consider:
11. Taking another look at decision commenting. If more space was allowed to comment on decisions, and if people could reply to each other's comments in decisions, we might not need a thread at all in many of these cases.

Note:

• Care has to be taken on who can change the sharing options for decisions and threads to make sure that people who still need access can have access, and the right people are controlling this access.

Some good thoughts @leilapearson thanks for laying out all those proto-user-stories ;)

The point of a thread has been to allow position statements to be kept short, while still allowing lengthier discussion while the decision is being made. Also, to allow a series of decisions to be made on the same issue or project, without the related discussion being fragmented across multiple page.

Reading your second to last paragraph made me giggle. Your idea makes sense, but there's so many possible ways of combining polls, responses, and comments. Loomio, like any app with an established user base, needs to avoid making radical changes to user workflow, unless the gains in usefulness are really worth the transition pain for users. Witness the confusion caused by removing that one button.