Better oversight of threads in Groups
Jelle Langbroek
Public
Seen by 258
Hi,
I'm actively using Loomio for a couple of months now with a small group of 8 people. Works great!
I'd like to add a feature request.
When viewing one of the groups I created it has 15 Discussions in it. Some of them in progress, some are already voted on, some already executed and done. I'd really like to have the ability to oversee that progress in the titles (in the blink of an eye).
First proposal:
Be able to turn the discussion title (or background of title) green when it's executed.
Together we can find some good visual representation of the discussions(list) when there is voting in progress or voting is already done on one or more proposals.
-> When discussions turn into proposals and proposals are being executed, the discussions list becomes a mixture of discussions and a todo list. We might be able to visually represent this better.
Jelle Langbroek Wed 27 Jan 2016 10:02PM
That's a great idea for now indeed! Thanks
Matthew Bartlett Wed 27 Jan 2016 10:11PM
… although a bit of experimenting with which emojis have broad support would be a good idea — I wrote the above comment on Safari browser on an iPad — now that I'm on Chrome on a MacBook the first symbol isn't available (see attached image below).
Mind you… proper emoji support in Loomio is on the cards
Greg Cassel Thu 28 Jan 2016 12:36AM
Emoji support in Loomio is huge ; thanks for sharing here :)
James Kiesel Wed 27 Jan 2016 9:24PM
I've also been having a think recently about letting folks put custom css specific to their group somewhere, which I think would allow for a whole world of customization possibilities.
Jelle Langbroek Tue 2 Feb 2016 6:07PM
Thanks. I can work with that for now.
How should I go further from here? I'd really love to have the option available to all users to 'close' threads when they're done. Maybe even transform the item to a small ToDo list that's attached to the thread.
So, where should I ask devs for there features?
Matthew Bartlett Wed 3 Feb 2016 12:19AM
Yes it would be great to be able to close threads. I'll feed this feedback into the product discussions.
Meantime, one workaround I've seen is for a coordinator to create an 'Archive' subgroup, with the settings Privacy:Closed + Advanced: "Members of Parent Group can see threads." Then when a conversation is ready to be closed, anyone who's a coordinator of both the group and subgroup can move the discussion into the Archive.
I'd love to hear more about how you'd imagine the ToDo list working…
Greg Cassel Wed 3 Feb 2016 1:10AM
Great workaround suggestion! I want to talk a bit about thread-closing alternatives, because in my community experience, people may often disable new commentary for constructive or destructive purposes.
I think that a dedicated archiving location is preferable to 'thread-closing' per se.
Perhaps for some communities, it should be possible to reopen an archived thread simply by commenting upon it. However, it could be helpful to require an extra click or two, with something such as: "Commenting here will reopen this topic. Are you sure?" Also, some large communities may want to require someone to 'second' or 'third' efforts to reopen a topic. For instance, maybe allow anyone to comment directly in an archived topic, but without creating notifications to others-- and maybe require the commentator to get one or more others to 'like' or upvote the new comment, in the archived topic, in order to reopen the topic. (This may require some personal outreach on their part.)
On a related note, I think that the ideal for a radically distributed, 'flat' community would be for thread archiving and/or closing to be determined by a poll or (better) a community ratings tool... For instance, allow anyone to suggest closing a topic; and let others 'upvote' or 'downvote' that suggestion, until some community-defined threshold for administrative action.
I know the Loomio dev team is already working hard on lots of stuff, and I don't expect anyone to necessarily agree with these ideas; but do they make sense?
Jelle Langbroek Wed 10 Feb 2016 1:01PM
Archiving is indeed a nice workaround.
About the ToDo list; many proposals close with something to do for someone. It would be great if you could turn a 'voted' proposal to a todo-item in a list on the page. People should be able to subscribe themselves to a todo-item to take responsibilty for that.
Then you can turn democratic decisions into direct action with people attached to parts of the todo list. When nobody subscribes to a todo-item, the item can be reopened to discuss again maybe.
Maybe turn the 'previous proposals' section (right side of thread view) into something where people can see which proposals are todo-items and if there are people already subscribed to it.
Jelle Langbroek Wed 10 Feb 2016 1:05PM
Maybe allow everyone to re-open discussions when they want to. Same thing as everyone being able to edit the context of a thread.
I wouldn't make it too complex with more voting systems in place to vote about every step in the various processes within Loomio. Keep it simple and give everybody enough 'power' to influence the processes as they are.
Matthew Bartlett · Wed 27 Jan 2016 7:21PM
Cool idea, Jelle!
If I was going to try that with the current feature set, I'd cooy and paste emoji (from getemoji.com) into the thread title, to indicate different states, e.g. ☑️ for voted on, ✅ for executed.
Just a thought!