Archiving Discussions

Sorry the discussion info is a bit of a mess but I wanted to get the brainstorming process started.

What I'm currently thinking is that the archive button would be in the "show discussion" page, and have two options: Archive to and Delete.

The Delete would effectively archive the discussion into the database abyss where it's just never displayed but the data is still stored.

Archive to History could have it's own filter in the groups page so you can look through archived discussions.

Personally I think once a discussion is archived it should be locked and if at a later date it needs discussing again it would be best to just start fresh and reference the archived discussion.

Thoughts?

These are all questions for our users aren't they? Maybe we can conduct a few quick user interview questions and to figure out what people want.

My gut feeling is that we want to start as simple as possible with this feature. From what I've heard, the biggest need at the moment is for an admin to be able to hide a conversation from a group that is misleading or problematic. But I could be wrong.

PS - Thanks for starting this conversation. =)

Once we have @mentions we could get user feedback at with the ease of a prompt mention...

Super keen to see this happen! Most urgent thing is admin ability to archive test discussions to get them out of the way so new people coming in don't get confused by junk. One possibility is that archiving shifts things into the "previous decisions" list, but its focus could be expanded out to "older discussions/decisions". Sensible starting point?

I don't think it should be shifted into the "previous decisions" list, because that is a list of proposals, not discussions. However, perhaps we could make an identical feature, only titled "archived" or "hidden discussions". It might only be viewable to admins, and they would have the ability to "unhide" a discussion, or to delete it entirely.

Thoughts?

Jon, I was suggesting that "previous decisions" could be broadened out to "previous discussions/decisions" so it could include both. Just an idea - separating them out might make more sense

I prefer Jon's take over Ben's. The 'previous decisions' list is a record of group activity. The 'archived discussions' list is a list of stuff that happened that nobody needs to look at.

I'd probably start by making it visible to anyone in the group, in the interests of transparency, just hidden one click away in exactly the way the Previous Decisions list is.

Sounds good to me

Visible to anyone? Hmm... what are the use cases here?

1. Group has a discussion that now needs to be hidden from new users (this has already happened in the Enspiral group)
2. User creates a confusing discussion that isn't helpful for the group and should be hidden

If we go with private, we knock out both use cases. Public we only knock out use case number 2. Currently there is no way in the app to hide a discussion. If I didn't have server access Enspiral would have been put in an awkward spot after the member nominations went through. Anyway, I'm not saying that hidden discussions should definitely be private. Just wanted to point out the consequences of both options. Can we think of any other use cases here?

I'm not 100% convinced case 1 is legit. I'm one of the 'new users' you're referring to and I went looking for that specific discussion and was bugged out to not find it. It felt really at odds with transparency and I'm not at all convinced that it was good that you had the superpowers to delete it.

In the interest of making things less confusing, let's just focus on Use case 1 for now as it seems highest priority.

Effectively what the user wants to see is a delete button for discussions for when something goes wrong or just needs to be removed.

There are some problems super powers wise with someone having the power to delete a discussion but... are there any ways to work around that?

Maybe only discussions with no comments (or under a threshold) could be delete-able?
Or have a 24 hour window where a discussion can still be removed?

I have a strong inclination that admins need the ability to delete a discussion at any time, regardless of how long the conversation has gone on for or how many comments have occurred. I think admins should be able to do nearly anything.

And maybe we say that the discussion is just "hidden" instead of deleted. So if some of the group members complain about it being deleted the discussion can always be retrieved.

So, give admins the option to hide a discussion but don't worry about building the 'retrieve' feature until later?

Basically yeah, although I think building in the "retrieve" functionality is so simple that it could probably be done at the same time.

Sounds like it's time for some mockups!

I'm not really sold on the "retrieve" feature, Archive/Deletes should be a tough decision and rarely used so I don't think it should be an easy option to get them back.

I've added a mockup on mybalsamiq with where I think the option would be. I think changing the small down arrow to a cog might make sense too? (In the discussion title bar).

Might help if I paste the link https://loomio.mybalsamiq.com/projects/archivediscussions/Archive+Dropdown

Screwy permissions on that link, I can't access.

Does balsamiq have a permission setting to make it viewable to anyone without forcing login?

Just sorted out the permissions for ya @richard

Agree with everything Paul :)

Yep agree with not making it a back and forth thing with hiding discussions.

I think the use case 2 (in the context above) is important too. e.g. looks like this https://www.loomio.org/discussions/1236 has been done now, no? So shouldn't it now be closed/ archived? i.e. put in an 'archived discussions' area and locked so no new comments can be made. Perhaps with a note saying something like "want to re-open this discussion? start a new one".

On this topic, I've been thinking that every thread should have an 'outcome' field, that may or may not be connected to the existing proposal outcome feature.

@richarddbartlett discussion initiators could be prompted say a fortnight after the last comment to provide an outcome or archive

We've got archives in Econsensus. We're pretty randomly flexible, so we can just shove anything into the archives - this takes trust :-) We can rarely also move something back out of the archives into life, or in our case, between decisions and proposals if we feel that it's been made erroneously.

The archives are, as you'd expect, useful for us to hide dead topics, or proposals that didn't go anywhere.

Making search find archives by default (and allowing disabling) seems like a reasonable step - people may not know the state of something they are looking for.

We also talked about the related idea of making feedback on something "old" - e.g. we have a proposal, we decide to do some stuff, and we agree to review our decisions in 6 months. In some way, if we can see that previous discussions, comments, concerns etc. are "before this review" then we can maybe re-use the same screen and start a fresh review of the same decision. Maybe if everything on a discussion is "old" then it is the same as being in the archives, or if everything on a proposal is "old" then it didn't get made. We haven't got there on this one yet :-)

Thanks @tomlord, that reminds me, it would be really great on some decisions to have a feature that automatically prompts a review in X months.

I do not know whether this would work for other groups, but because I can't help but associate Features group with something like a bug tracking system (e.g. Jira or Bugzilla) I would suggest options like Close (No more edits and comments can be added), Reopen (Need to provide a good reason and possibly to be approved by admin), Clone (if we would decide not to let open, but just start a new discussion based on existing one), Link (I will start a new discussion about this as that would require a visible discussion ID).
Sorry, that it might seem not to be so related to the initial description, but I think Closing of discussion is definitely a needed feature and could possibly postpone delete and archive problem (as for me in those cases quite a big thought on who and which level are allowed to do so is needed).

We only agreed to implement delete in Indymedia codebases for use cases like neo-nazis open-publishing propaganda videos on Indy sites and leaching our bandwidth. Since we are only talking about storing text, not images sound or video, I don't think delete is required.

I agree with @paulsmith and @aijazvidrina that it would be helpful if co-ordinators could Close a discussion, and only they could Re-Open a closed one. I agree with @jonlemmon and @richarddbartlett that 'Closed Discussions' should be archived separately from 'Previous Decisions', as well as from active discussions.

I also agree with @richarddbartlett that it would be helpful is Balsamiq mock-ups were publicly viewable, rather than requiring log-in.

Now the search feature has been enabled (yay!) I think it is more important than ever that archiving be implemented; quite a lot of top results for a few of the searches I've tried have been really old discussions/ proposals that have basically been done/ implemented - they shouldn't be the top results!

Thanks for the new Search function, that was amazingly quick (Agile?) I would add to my comment below that there should be two kinds of archiving:

• Closed:

  • for discussions which have run their course
  • still visible to group members
  • stored in a searchable 'Closed Discussion' archive
  • excluded from searches of active discussions
  • can only be Re-Opened by a Co-ordinator

• Hidden

  • for discussion which are tests, duplicates, mistakes, or relics of misuse
  • visible only to Co-ordinators
  • Can moved to Closed, or Re-Opened by Co-ordinators

I notice in the ''feature release' thread that a 'delete discussion' feature was rolled out in Feb. Once an archive function is in place, I would suggest deprecating the 'delete' function for the reasons I gave below.

that would be very useful if we can somehow archive our discussions we don't need any more for discussion or decision making but we still need it as references or other ways of use.

Sorry to up this discussion, but it looks like it never came to a conclusion (there were surely other priorities one year ago). The "archiving" subject started here, it continued here, and it was launched again here, and not sure I found all of them but this one seems to be the most advanced one. If you know a more appropriate thread about this, please let me know.

Talking about 'archives', we should not miss what it is: something that does not appears in front, but that everyone can consult if needed.

Moreover, an 'archived discussion' should be a closed discussion, in which we can't comment again, unless it is opened again, or a new one is opened.

Till now, my trick is to create a group called "ARCHIVES", and I put in discussions I don't want users to be bothered with anymore. I made it private so that users don't effectively see them and can't effectively comment them again, but my wish is that users could still read them, in a specific 'archived' tab, or at the bottom of other discussions.

This last point makes me come to a conclusion: as you may develop a 'pin up this discussion' feature to put discussions at the top with a flag "sticky", you may develop nearly the same 'archive this discussion' feature that would put discussions at the bottom with a flag "archived" (and deactivate comments).

Thank you @Grégoire Barrault - I agree! This feature is in the roadmap: https://trello.com/c/nvuXmHPB

I hope we can build it soon.

@robertguthrie in our groups, rename the title of a discussion to prefix it with [closed] when it's over or when the decision is implemented or refused.
"pin to the bottom" seems more convenient than renaming the title of the discussions.

The only thing that bothers me a little is that it hapen from time to time that someone add a comment to an old discussion after it's closed. If it remains pinned to the bottom, people might miss it (for dummies discussions, it is the intention but if we use it as a flag to indicate the discussion is closed it might be annoying)

I should precise my idea: when you click the 'archive discussion' button, it should work nearly like the 'pin up' button, since the discussion get sticked to bottom instead of top, but moreover, the comments should be closed when using 'archive discussion'. And to keep being clear the button should be called 'archive', and not 'pin bottom'..

I think I find the features, as described, clearer than what is being suggested. A button to close a discussoin, and a way to see closed discussions seems more direct and clear than "pin to bottom"