Idea: New users should be told what "Block"ing a proposal is

How about taking them to a "Welcome" screen that tells them more about Loomio, including what it means to "Block" a proposal?

Thoughts?

Some groups will not have the Block voting option (the ones I plan to open soon for sure). Directing new users to a page that contains explanation about how to use that option will therefore cause confusion. I plan to vote against this proposal.

Defining text could easily be added to the "voting" page, even on the drop down where a user selects their option.

There have been many rich discussions in this community about what block means...

https://www.loomio.org/d/xPyUG8tE/why-the-distinction-between-disagree-and-block

https://www.loomio.org/d/R6Ml74gE/using-a-block

I think we should harvest the wisdom expressed by our community in these discussions and put it into some kind of help page

@alexanderzatko Is there an option now, for Group creators, to not include a Block option for voters?

@alanna I think the notion is sufficiently ill-defined that new users should be made aware of it immediately. Do you agree, or do you think defining the term in a Help/FAQ-type page is good enough?

I think understanding the power and meaning of block is important. But is it any more important than knowing how to craft a good proposal? How to make people in your group feel welcome? How to facilitate all voices to be heard? it's just one of a whole set of skills and knowledge groups and individuals need to develop to do good collaborative decision-making. I think we need to improve our help documentation and onboarding processes generally, and learning about blocking should be part of it. @hannahsalmon and Chelsea are working on a project around that now.

@elimisteve I hope the customisable labels and colours for 4 voting options, per group will allow me to disable the Block option. If this will not happen, I will consider forking the app.

@alanna Great. (To be clear, I never meant to suggest that telling users what Block'ing is most important, only that it is very important, and not that it should be the only thing included in the educational portion of the onboarding process, merely that it should be included.)

I guess the 'Block' concept really jumps out at people who aren't familiar with consensus process. It's easy to assume, or to imagine, that blocks are a license for groups to be dominated by a sort of conservative obstructionism.

@alexanderzatko Forking the app to remove a button sounds rather extreme, bro. Here's the relevant part of from the @alanna-linked-to Trello card that does indeed make it sound like we'd get to perform the type of customizing you'd want, and more, if this idea were to be accepted by the Loomio team (which hasn't happened, right, @alanna?)

I'd really like to see a high level of combustibility, not just labels and colours, also the ability to create different categories of vote.

@elimisteve as you can see from the brouhaha on these fora, that the concept of Blocking is more than a presence/absence of a button. Many people here think, that people will generally be open to be educated on concepts that are foreign to them - like the reason why Loomio has "Blocking" option. My experience is, that it is a challenge by itself to bring people to vote at all. I can't imagine why would these folks want to spend mental energy to learn about subtle differences between "No" and "Hell no!" :-)