Archiving Discussions
Paul Smith PublicSeen by 133The card on Trello has 4 votes so it seems like there's support for this feature.
Use cases:
1) A user creates a dummy discussion as an example or for testing and then realises it's in their group history forever. The User or Group wants to get rid of this discussion and never see it again.
2) A user creates a discussion within a group, a consensus is reached, the decision is acted on and "completed". The Group then wants to put this discussion into a seperate area so that it can be looked at or referenced later but isn't in the list of what is currently being decided on.
Questions
How would we want this to work and what would it look like?
Will archived discussions still be viewable? Or should there be an option when archiving to keep it in history or not. (check box?)
If archived discussions are still viewable
Will archived discussions be locked? Eg/ Can someone still comment or create a proposal on an archived discussion?
Is it better to be able to dig up "dead" discussions or start a fresh new discussion referencing the old one?
I'm pleased to support this simple and elegant means of reducing group clutter.
Group decision making is a complex business as it is - reducing the clutter by archiving now-irrelevant discussions will simplify the interface and improve the user ability to find and focus on what is important. This Proposal was well presented.
As others have said, it will relieve the front screen clutter.
like. Also need to consider implications for search
i'm in favor of functionality found in GitHub issues, namely being able to:
- close discussions
- label discussions with arbitrary tags
- filter discussions (from within the page listing discussions) for open/closed status and any labels
i think what's being proposed here is very specific to one use case, where a more general solution might be better for more use cases.
@ahdinosaur I agree... most of that is in the roadmap backlog. We've intentionally not made any implementation decisions because we need to sit down and design a cohesive feature set to meet these needs. Some of the functionality will come in with the 1.0 alpha interface, but probably not all of it.
Sorry for this false notification, I said I would set 2 months for voting, I may have miss-clicked; now it is corrected.
@Grégoire Barrault It would actually be better to set a much shorter closing date. Do we really need to keep this open for two months? This project moves so fast who knows what the focus will be two months from now. I would suggest only a week at maximum.
@alanna you are right. Development evolves faster than that and 2 months is probably too much.
For the previous proposition I set one week, but it seems members hadn't time to check their Loomio's activity, at least. This time I set more to see if more people would vote. There are twice more voters till now, but it may be the result of a more tangible proposition. Or people really like this feature so they have a motivation to connect and vote, whereas sometimes they don't feel affected by what is proposed.
Also, as archive feature is a 'later' improvement on trello, we are not in a hurry, so I set 15 days from now instead of 2 months, and let's see what happen...
@ahdinosaur , yes it's specific to one use, but all groups end up needing it as the number of discussions inevitably grows. This feature remains compatible with close, label, and filter ones. For example, the archive function would use the label 'archived', or the close function if it exists.
I assume that what is proposed here is a bit heavier than just filter, since the concept of archiving takes a crucial part in the group management process itself. Having specific buttons and access would help to formalize this step in the process, and newcomers would understand instantly what is passed and what is present.
A question, has there been any discussion about 'saving' Loomio group discussions when Loomio is being used by public sector types who need to comply with public records requirements, etc.?
@simon1 yes there has been discussion about the need for archiving. I think it will go along with a feature to save as a printable PDF format as well.
Thanks for responding to my question, @alanna. It's good to know that archiving for recordkeeping purposes is on the agenda.
Will search results look for content in achieved discussions ?
@Grégoire Barrault thanks for hosting this proposal and creating that nice outcome! This feature will definitely make it into the roadmap at some point. Right now, we're focused on finishing the transition to Loomio 1.0, but early next year we'll have a chance to look at new functionality users want.
Archiving has been in the backlog for a while... feel free to vote on it. https://trello.com/c/nvuXmHPB
I agree it's a good idea.