Rules and Processes for our use of Loomio

When it comes to subgroups like the Policy Group, I would say that whatever decisions they come to consensus on needs to be put to the full membership via the main group before it is considered a Party decision.

At this point, my understanding is that we are in a sort of trial mode, where any decisions made in Loomio - including the Main group - must be accepted by the Board (and/or an MMORPG) before they are formalized. Once the membership get to grips with using Loomio, and we get our trainer wheels off, is may be appropriate to say that any proposal which gets consensus in Loomio is a Party decision, which would mean in theory that Board decisions could be over-ruled by the membership via Loomio.

Sounds reasonable. What signifies the 'main group'.
And how do we get the main group to vote? Traditionally this would be at an AGM or snail mail, should we embrace email voting from the members?

I never wanted Loomio to have any power over the board and still don't.
The board consists of democratically elected representatives, using a Condorcet method. That's heaps of democracy. Boards are universally despised and accused of slowing things down, because they do. The swiftness of Loomio allows violent reactions and inappropriate or pop responses. Loomio must never be given power, ever.

Where Loomio can shine is member engagement. The policy group should be considered a think tank. The people on Loomio are the same people who will be running in and voting in any board election, likely involving platforms championing and sponsoring policies.
The transition from Loomio to policy will involve enough board members brokering and voting it through. There is still room for speedy reaction if the board happen to agree with the idea, without letting mob rule running the show.

What signifies the ‘main group’.

The part of Loomio which isn't one of the subgroups, ie the part of Loomio that this discussion is taking place in.

I like the ideal of liquid democracy and I am very interested in how it works in practice.

If Loomio turns out to be a good platform for such a system (which it seems likely).

I think we need to establish some rules about how a decision being discussed and voted on in Loomio, such as how many members voting on an issue constitutes a fair representation of the members, etc...

@strypey I have a couple of questions:
- What does MMORPG stand for?
- Am I right with the assumption that every member that registers for the main group also becomes a member of the policy group? If not: why not?
- Am I right that all contents in the main group is visible to the public, i.e. without the need of a loomeo account?
- What is the visibility of the policy group?
- What is the default visibility to subgroups?

@adam I don't think that the loomeo developers have any intention to drive loomeo towards a liquid democracy platform. There appear to be no plans to bring delegative voting into play or even only preferential voting.

I think that once we have reached a certain number of participants we will have to move to a different platform. Liquid Feedback would be my current favourite.

@craigmagee I am not sure if an online platform can be given the ultimate power at a future point in time or not, but I am pretty certain that you and I have different opinions about the role of the board.

I see the need to organise the decision making process in the PP as a bottom-up process. Everyone needs to be able to be influential in the areas of expertise immediately when engaging the party. The degree of influence should rise with the reputation one earns. In real time. Liquid.

The board - as a long term work force - shall serve the party in catering for a fertile environment for this to happen - and otherwise step back.

That said it becomes obvious that I don't want the board to have the last say in all things policy. I could reluctantly discuss something like a veto right; but I cannot accept the board as a political power center.

This makes clear that all binding political decisions in my point of view must be done by a member meeting.

As far as I know everything is visible to the public.
MMORPG = monthly membership online real time public gathering.
Don't know how policy subgroup membership works.
https://www.facebook.com/events/281699551980782/?fref=ts

Members engaging on Loomio and electing representatives to the board is bottom-up. The only reason it's working top down now is because the number of members involved with internal-process is roughly the same as the number of board and officer positions.
I have personally pushed for MMORPGs to work, supported the implementation of Loomio, did what I could to keep the CiviCRM progressing.

The board members are not servants subject to the whim of popular majority on every issue. They are the people that do the work and do it out of their personal reasons.
If the board are to be treated as employee by the membership base you need to go find some more members, ones willing to pay the board as employers.

If representative governance is the answer then we should all be in main stream parties. Pirate Parties around the world are pushing for increased democracy and participation and using a variety of methods. The most interesting of these is Italy where there is no board and all party decisions, including candidate selection and policy are made by liquid feedback.
If Craig is so worried that our membership will be swayed by populist arguments then we can institute safeguards. A proper constitution with safe guards including a human rights provision and a board veto (unanimous) on any loomio decision that they feel is against the good of the Party.
If we are not for the fullest participatory democracy possible in terms of culture and available technology then we moving out of the mainstream of the movement.

Loomio doesn't achieve that?
It provides for and encourages full participation of members, which will hopefully continue on with full participation in the democratic board elections. Loomio greatly enhances democracy with direct interaction and transparency; mob-rule doesn't.

@hubatmcjuhes

Am I right with the assumption that every member that registers for the main group also becomes a member of the policy group? If not: why not?

Any member of the Main group can join the Policy Group, but I think they currently need to be approved by an admin. If Loomio can be configured to automatically allow Main group members into the Policy Group, I would support that.

Am I right that all contents in the main group is visible to the public, i.e. without the need of a loomeo account?

Correct. In this respect, Loomio is like the Forums on pirateparty.org.nz.

What is the visibility of the policy group?

Not sure. I think there is a good argument for making the Policy Group visisble only to Members, particularly now that we are discussing potentially controversial policy ideas there, often under our public names rather than handles. Making these discussions private may allow people to express themselves more freely and honestly than if they are doing so in the public gaze.

@craigmagee has a theory that direct democracy = mob rule. Over the next few months, our use of Loomio will give us an opportunity to test that theory against reality. If in fact the decisions made by the membership using Loomio are more nuanced, and less knee-jerk than those made by the Board, then @craigmagee's theory will have been disconfirmed. In the meantime I think it's reasonable to take a cautious approach, and allow Loomio to remain subserviant to the Board/ MMORPG.

I'm kind of fascinated with having transparency for all our decision making processes. Personally I have got use to expressing myself publicly especially with the advent of FB where everything you say can be cut and pasted. If we do cut out the public will members be able to cut and paste or even quote what they see? Knowing the internet making that group private would be little guarantee that the info there would remain so...

Just checked, turns out Policy Group is currently publicly visible. Does anyone want to argue for a change to that? Despite what I said above, I’m happy being transparent - sunlight is the best disinfectant and all that.

Anyone who wants to comment using pseudonym to speak freely without experiencing discrimination at work etc should be free to do so, providing that the Membership Officers can confirm that pseudonym belongs to a paid up member.

When you start a discussion there is an option for it to be private or not.
It's good for them to be public. Potential members can see how things work and may be enticed to join so they can have their say. Google also indexes it.

@robueberfeldt you make a good point about things staying private on the net.

I'm unsure what security Loomio has chosen, but this being a political group that is serious. There will be many interested parties (pun intended), the likelihood that anything said would stay private in the long run is almost none.

One of my major issues with politics is the lack of transparency, I joined PPNZ as attempt to help shape a different kind of political party.

I think the population deserves better and more trustworthy representation.

I don't see why we would need policy discussions, and thus our decision making process, to be hidden from view. Yes there may be things said during those conversations that may not be great, but this will re-enforce the view that PPNZ is committed to transparency and true representation of their members views.

BTW: I am under the impression that there are a couple of discussions behind closed doors where a basic member like me cannot participate, yet alone look into. Most of those seem to have something like 'Press Release' in the title. What's going on there?

Pass on the 'press release' privacy issue, IDK. But now that someone has mentioned pseudonyms, I'm pretty keen for us to not use them not just for transparency sake but to make things workable. Tommy and David came to visit and we were trying to work out who the core movers and shakers were in the party, it was a mad list of pseudonyms with some people having a couple as well as their real names to make things even more confusing! A lot of this started when FB still accepted them but I don't think it is appropriate. I don't think we need a rule or anything as some people have serious personal privacy issues at stake, but where possible could people please use the names they use in real life. It wont be acceptable for candidates and the electoral commision. Just for communications etc it would make life simpler.

Press releases are in my understanding, areas where we draft political statements relevant to our policies. When we have had issues with previous communications managers being uncontactable, I have had a couple of press releases I wrote never getting released.
Where the communications manager comes in, is checking the Press Release, then mass email of the news organisations.

@hubatmcjuhes the rationale for making the Communications group not publicly visible is that it was set up for collaborative drafting of media releases. It seemed sensible to do this behind close doors, in case unfriendly media started quoting from unfinished press releases. Any Pirate member on the Main Loomio group can join the group.

We should probably set up rules on how to exclude system abusers e.g. spammers. Moderators could suspend a member who then has the right to appeal to the whole loomio group for example.

What would be a quorum for a Loomio decison to be valid? If one person votes for a policy and no one votes against or abstains does it become PPNZ policy?

@strypey How can a member join? I don't seem to find a way to do so.

https://my.pirateparty.org.nz/ - though we're short on admin so it's still a very slow process

Spammers won't be a problem in our Loomio group, as only financial members of the party are allowed to participate. This is one thing that makes Loomio a significant improvement on the old Forum, as well as eliminating spam, it obliges people to put their money where their mouth is, and take their participation seriously.

From Pirate News international

"Pirate Party of New Zealand Piratecamp. February 28, 2014
The small seaside town of Otaki saw the first Pirate Camp held by the Pirate Party of New Zealand over the weekend of 21-23 February 2014. The attendees decided to concentrate on planning for the upcoming elections and how to use that to attract more members. They also decided to plan a revision of the Party’s constitution which gives ultimate decision making power to the board and not the general assembly. This and other questionable provisions were implemented to get the Party off the ground. Also to revisit the ‘core principles’ which are very narrowly defined and rather hesitant in formulation."

Looks like we have just become famous for being undemocratic.
How the fuck can three people change the constitution? Answer they cant. Still haven't heard or seen a report from the people that went but they have done a press release WTF?

Please, @robueberfeldt, can you provide a link to the source of that text you are citing? I am not convinced that your citing is correct.

As one of the attendees of the camp I can ensure you that many things have been discussed, but nothing at all has been 'implemented' at that camp. How would that be possible?
If there was anything that has been decided on, then it was: to present this and that thought or idea to the broader community of the party to discuss.

That the parties constitution needs to be revised is nothing new, though. This has been expressed very clearly when the constitution of the Wellington chapter has been agreed upon end of last year. It expresses the need to revise the national constitution as it will expire otherwise.

There is no need for conspirational theories. This camp was not supposed to be a meeting of only four (not three) members. Everyone was invited, 11 have booked and 7 have cancelled their booking (leaving only four to pay for the venue).
Now you want to blame those three to four who have actually been there for actually having been talking to each other? What do you expect would there be to report? What significance would such a report of such a tiny gathering have? You gave the answer already: there is none. This is also thanks to - well - for example, your absence.

I am sorry if I sound rude, but frankly I am actually still very disappointed about the lack of attendance at the camp. I was hoping to meet most of the active members for the first time and had some hope that we would seed some ideas together and to see some grand thoughts to flourish. This didn't happen to the expected degree. And now I am absolutely not prepared to eat shit for having been there, only because others have decided to not have.

I do not accept your upper case yelling!

Civility should be watchword in the Loomio discussions. Bluster and vilification, especially from board members, in order to shut down discussion are not commensurate with Pirate principles.

The decisions made at the camp, at which board members were significantly absent, were the intentions of those present. We will use the democratic processes available to us to push for change. We discussed which changes and goals we wanted to see and also decided to wait until after the election to implement any ideas not related to the election itself.

We have not changed anything and merely transparently reported our activities to the membership. We are under no obligation to report directly to any board members.

I will have to reassess my availability for campaign activity under the current administration. I am a democrat - in the original meaning of that Greek word - the rule of the people - not an elective monarchy or kratocracy which is the way it seems to be evolving.

I cut and pasted the complete abstract as emailed to me by the Pirate Times newsletter.

Upper case yelling? WTF is an acronym, People use capitals to signify those. Insulting would be if I directed insults, using the word fuck means I'm heated it isn't an insult. I could give examples of how it can be used as an insult but I will refrain.

http://piratetimes.net/pirate-party-of-new-zealand-piratecamp/

I made it amply clear to the organisers that I wouldn't be available to come to the parley, I live in the upper part of the North Island, I have no money and no vehicle, I take care of my elderly Dad and have animals. I too was disappointed by the turn out. Especially Tommy, David and Kirk, the first two as they said they would and pressured me to go and Kirk as he is president.

Andrew I don't get your press release, in it it says decisions were made and the press release says they were undemocratic? Were you quoted? Or did Pirate Times write there own story?

My email is robmanueb@gmail.com
I would like to discuss with both of you some other thoughts I have but I don't have your emails. Could you both email me or let me know what your email addresses are?

I wrote the article and my email is at the bottom of the article.
http://piratetimes.net/pirate-party-of-new-zealand-piratecamp/
In it I said "They also decided to plan a revision of the Party’s constitution" not "They also decided to implement a revision of the Party’s constitution". http://www.thefreedictionary.com/plan

Rob:

Still haven’t heard or seen a report from the people that went but they have done a press release WTF? <<

A report from Pirate Camp was posted on the PPNZ GoogleGroup nearly a month ago:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/ppnz/F5RNlmokROk

@robueberfeldt OK, I get it: WTF is an abbreviation, not an upper case yelling. My apologies for my misinterpretation (even though I try hard and fail in imagining ways to say: 'What the fuck' without yelling ;-) )

@strypey Thanks for sharing. That must have been quite a bit of work to get it up. I have not been aware of this publication, though, until you mentioned it here. Just one more example that there are many interesting places and little assistance in getting to know all of those.

BTW: Does anybody know where to find the IRC protocols of the board meetings?

We need to define a quorum for decision to be valid. It should not be absurdly high as many topics will not be of interest to all active members. A percentage of the Loomio group or a fixed number? The first is a moving target and the second would have to be regularly revised.

Some members' overenthusiastic use of the block should be discussed. A limited number of blocks in a fixed period would be one way to stop possible sabotage of the process. Another way would be to see a single blocking vote as consensus -1

I think we all have learned a lot about how to use (and how to not use) loomio in the last half year. I would like to suggest to soon after the upcoming board election more formally define a process or framework for how decision should be made on loomio.
As a starting point for the discussion I suggest to addopt the framework defined by Gastil & Black:

http://www.delib-democracy.org/index.php?title=Gastil_and_Black_framework

Half a year ago, @strypey has suggested:

At this point, my understanding is that we are in a sort of trial mode, where any decisions made in Loomio - including the Main group - must be accepted by the Board (and/or an MMORPG) before they are formalized. Once the membership get to grips with using Loomio, and we get our trainer wheels off, is may be appropriate to say that any proposal which gets consensus in Loomio is a Party decision, which would mean in theory that Board decisions could be over-ruled by the membership via Loomio.

This was following the board decision to make loomio a subordinate body of the party.

While I am a strong advocate for having a collaborative decision making platform and having membership driven decisions being the highest authority in the party, I have also always proposed that this would require us to move away from loomio and engage Liquid Feedback (LF) instead.

I now think differently. I now think that we need multiple tools for different phases of the process:

LF is great for formal decisions based on due processes and differentiated voting options. This framework allows for making matured decisions that fulfill the criteria to be regarded as binding party policies.

LF is not suitable for discussing matters, working out where the consensus zone is, collaborate on the proper wording of the final proposal.

The latter is where loomio (maybe together with a referenced piratePad) really shines.

I am under the impression that a lot of the raised objections against the extensive use of loomio (and against the wording of specific decisions in loomio) stem from the assumption that any one decision in loomio would always have to be considered formal party position. Loomio is not designed for such a use case and definitely not fit for that purpose.

So I now envisage a tool chain where loomio can play the role of the internal communication and collaboration hub, where matters can be more freely discussed in a more open group of interested people, may it be financial members or like-minded others; and formal proposals can be prepared with the help of piratPads.
Matured proposals can then be raised on LF where only financial members can interact; the outer world only enjoys unlimited read-only-access.

Loomio is a good starting place. We will need to have more active members before an LF system would be practical

@andrewreitemeyer Actually I now think that LF could be the ideal tool to resolve in a very elegant way the uncertainty that we now have with any loomio decision. I think, once we use it, we will be able to display the extraordinary nature of the grass-root party that we want to be; the more convincing can we be, which will help asking new members to join in.

Certainly, before we could consider implementing LF, we first would need to resolve the issue with the much too expensive hosting and the minimum to no funds that we have. This will require to try to (re-)activate former members of he party (internal membership drive).
But these considerations are of purely practical nature; strategically I would now want LF in place earlier rather than later.

"Grass-root party we want to be"? Not me, I'd like to see a real party emerge with real policies. The place for liquid-democracy is after the party has seats and wants to represent non-core issues as they go through parliament.

From what you're saying, I think you want https://internet-party.loomio.org/

@craigmagee We will have to see how the majority of the membership wants the party to evolve. But I am working under the assumption that PPNZ wants to be part of the world wide pirate party movement. And certainly will I advocate for such an approach in and/or outside of the board.

But could you please enlighten me what you mean with 'real' party and 'real' policies?
And can you please elaborate on how and by whom you think those (real or unreal) policies get developed? And why haven't they in the last 3 years of PPNZ's existence?

A party with an identity, instead of a wishy washy mess chasing after any vote it can get with empty promises from a non-cohesive platform in a desperate grab for power. You know, like Internet Mana.
How do you feel about Internet Party's Loomio? Do you want the PPNZ's to be the same, only each decision a binding directive the board has to carry out?

@craigmagee If you read my comment from three days ago carefully, you will find that it is explicitly addressing the issue that we have formally given loomio a role that it cannot fill out.
It is designed to discuss matters without loosing track of the stances of those who don't actively inject their arguments into the pool, but judge the arguments that are circulated by others. To have the ability to regularly check the common ground is excellent for working towards consensus. But it requires the 'decisions' along the way to evolve from vague to more specific ones. These loomio decisions cannot at the same time bear the burden of being formal positions of the party. And I think it is wrong to try to bend the tool to somehow make it work like this. It won't. Your reservations are just one more proof.

At the same time we want the membership to formulate the official positions of the party. The members are root. This is the whole point.

So I conclude we need a sandwich of tools, with the agile and volatile collaboration tools loomio and piratepad working towards LF as the deliberation tool where only matured proposals appear for consideration and due processing takes over.

Members can work in loomio on those issues they are really interested in and don't necessarily need to follow all other discussions.
To exercise their right to define the parties positions, it is enough to only follow the LF proposals that already represent the essence of what the working groups have worked out.
If this appears to be too much work for a member (I really hope we see those times where this could be the case), then one can delegate his/her vote to a trusted member in real-time, for one or more or all areas - without loosing the ability to exercise the voting individually on any particular proposal at any point in time.

Every member can engage with the decision making process to the exact degree he or she sees fit.

I think this model addresses your concerns to the full extend, doesn't it?

I don't think you addressed my concern at all, but am not interested in reading another diatribe of you relentlessly perusing this.
It will be more amusing to just watch you try.

For the record I would like to add a link to this very interesting discussion in the loomio community about the 'block' option that describes the difference between polling and consensus seeking very well:
https://www.loomio.org/d/xPyUG8tE/why-the-distinction-between-disagree-and-block

Somewhat relevant thread on the binding power of Loomio decisions as discussed by other organisations planning to use Loomio: https://www.loomio.org/d/C96jcyzx/anybody-got-a-loomio-friendly-constitution-for-their-org

We do not have to accept the use of the block button just because it is there. However, concensus decisions are to be preferred.

There was a long and very instructive debate in the loomio community about the block feature recently:
https://www.loomio.org/d/xPyUG8tE/why-the-distinction-between-disagree-and-block?proposal=kIWKYLOB

My stance on the block is that it is as strong as the arguments that the blocker delivers with the block. If it is used without a comment, I would regard it as a simple no.
So in essence I see it similar as an officers right to delay a boards decision to allow for addressing a serious, not yet resolved concern.

Jean-Danielle has said it all here: https://www.loomio.org/comments/336991

In a recent Loomio Community discussion, Greg Cassel shared a document laying out his thoughts on distributed governence which may be of use as we go forward with trying to run the NZ Pirates as a networked organisation.

As a new member of PPNZ, I'd like to ask about some of the issues raised in some of the older posts in this thread. I note that this thread is now 2 years old.

There was some discussion very early on in the thread about the weight given to Board-level decisions versus member-level Loomio decisions. However, I also recall reading elsewhere in these Loomio forums of a proposed dissolution of the Board, in favour of a more flattened Party structure.

I'm finding that reading through all these disparate threads on Loomio is made difficult without links to pertinent, subsequent information. No doubt other new members have encountered (and likely future new members may also encounter) similar problems comprehending the flow of thought here. Could we somehow tie all of this together into a single narrative, to show the current disposition of the Party, so that older, perhaps now irrelevant discussion and decisions here on Loomio do not distract new members like myself?