Consensus or failure ? - 1% of members have stated their position (10/714)

I think there is more to read from the numbers than just success or failure.

I did not vote because I felt like I did not understand the proposal.

Also It seemed like the proposal might be one where you're asking the Loomio core team to do something if it passes, which I did not feel good about.

should @robertguthrie and I abstain for the reasons above, or not vote?

@robertguthrie @jameswilson Apologies, I'm not complaining who did not vote.

I used my proposal as an example for this publication improvement

Loomio Community: 710 members
Example, 230 Members have Volume "Quiet or Silent", therefore not receiving notifications on my proposal
480 members are notified of my proposal

Currently: 0.85% (6/710) of the members have stated their position
Proposal: 1.25% (6/480) of the members have stated their position

I hope I have been clearer

I think this points to a big question, which may have been addressed in other threads, which is whether a vote can be considered "legitimate" or "representative" of the whole group if only part of the group has voted. This is something that has come up over and over in the Loomio group I created.

Personally, I think democracy is about showing up, and those who vote get to decide.

However, @carlosgallogaravan's question is interesting.

As far as I understand, even those who are not following a discussion would see voting happening on a related proposal in their dashboard or group page.

I think it would be useful to have a tally of votes that includes all members of the group, as is the case currently, and a second line indicating how many of those directly notified have voted. This could help group members have more information to decide whether they consider the vote valid or legitimate enough to then go ahead with the proposal or not. It could also help them decide whether there is a need to extend the closing time/date of the proposal, since they would know how many have voted out of those who have been directly notified of the proposal, and can given them a little more time to catch up with the discussion.

Another thought is that people might not vote because they don't want to express their opinion (which is the purpose of "abstain", but I think people often don't use that because they don't want to show they're abstaining - which may be a problem of lower-trust groups). Other times, people who have been notified might not vote because they are unsure about how they feel or are struggling to understand the issue - and again they might not express that through a comment or using "abstain", although of course they can change their vote later at any time.

Much of this is just about developing a culture of voting and expressing oneself, which is both an issue of trust-building within the group and also getting used to Loomio as a tool.

However, I'm wondering if it would help to have a fifth voting option called "I need more time" or "pondering" or something like that? I know this complicates things and is similar to "abstain", and we don't want to create confusion. I'm just thinking about something that would prompt people to express themselves even if they are confused, so that others can know how many people are aware of the vote and have gone from receiving the email to going to the discussion on Loomio. I think that would be useful to know when deciding on what to do with a proposal and the votes.

A related idea, to encourage users to indicate where they are at in their own thinking process is to have a sticky vote panel or prompt that stays visible in the screen even if the user scrolls down or up, that asks the user to vote. This might encourage voting right away, knowing that you can change your vote at any time (and that can be written as a reminder as well).

Or Loomio could simply keep track of how many of the users notified of a vote actually go to / read the discussion, and that information could be shown on a third line that gives a percentage of how many of users who have seen the proposal after publication have voted.

@olover thanks for complete very well the idea of the proposal

We can show:
Who read the proposal,
Who participated in the discussion,
Who voted

@olover I think you're right. Low trust/low expression groups can be a problem. We've talked in the past about this issue. One thing that's come up is the context setting when starting a group, so that when a group is formed on Loomio all the members agree what it means for a proposal to pass.

I think it's pretty clear that we don't want to explicitly say weather a proposal "Passed" or not. It's healthier that the group is able to understand that themselves.

I think this should be one of the first cultural help documents to be written, and it seems like it will be a real collaborative effort.

Referencing your comment, @olover -- I think that democracy has a good deal to do with who shows up, but I think this depends a lot on everyone's awareness of what's going on, and reasonable expectations for engagement, deliberation and decision.

...which is why making Loomio better and better will make it easier for people to show up. :-)

Discussion about what information would be useful in deciding how to call a vote is a great idea, but I suggest that it be based on proposals in other groups rather than proposals in Feature Ideas. As I understand it, proposals in Feature Ideas are non-binding - that is, no number of positive votes will mean that the core team is obligated to put this feature on their to do list. So there's no real sense in which they can "pass." All you can do is take them at face value - these specific people have these opinions.

@presley your comment is correct, but this sub-group is the specialized Feature Ideas, in order to improve the loomio platform

What is expressed are thinking about that we are in any group and therefore as action is necessary