Discussion tags / keywords

I see the potential and usability in a feature like this.

Would it make sense, if there was a 'parent' tag for the conversation. This parent tag could consist of the same options as the categories for defining a Loomio group (ranging from Arts, Economics, Uncategorized, etc in the category dropdown menu, when you want to make your own group).

After defining this parent tag, the user would be able to define their own tag (e.g. they chose the parent tag "Arts" + their own "Leonardo Da Vinci"). This way, there wouldn't be a mess with a gazillion different "parent" tags, but at the same time the ones that they can chose from would describe enough different fields of interest. Their own extra tag would bring the added value, but it woulld already be placed in the right context.

I love this idea. I'd also love to figure out whether tagging comments could work.

It is on our roadmap: https://trello.com/c/vqVDjxZ7/69-tagging-users-groups-discussions

using a wiki-like notation for tagging [keywords], both in the core discussion and comments, migth be an easy way. One would then simply need to educate users to not use too much of these tags (or opt. restrict to 3-5 tags in each post?) to keep the focus accurate.

queries on tags combination (and exclusion) might be a nice addition if the volume increases.

I posted this in another discussion. Seems relevant here as well. It demonstrates another way of using tags to visually map divergence/convergence in discussions.

Don't think there is a way to link to another post in Loomio so will try to copy/paste it here in full.

Not trying to spampost. Just interested in other opinions on the software below.

RT: .....Re mapping the visual grammar of divergent online discussions. Just wanted to bring the following site to your attention.

It seems to do a pretty good job at melding mindmap, content management, and conversational divergence. Behaves almost like a visual tiddlywiki. (One of my favourite tools for many years)

Debategraph, is an Australian software project, seems free & open, designed for political discussions etc (co-founder, Peter Baldwin, is past Aus Federal MP & Cabinet Minister).

Do persist in exploring past the first page. The onboarding experience isn't that great. But if you start to play with the options, especially views, it has very diverse & comprehensive functionality. (Box views, show all works best for me)

Break out the sidebar into page view to better see content. Has lots of great functionalities but you have to dig and play a bit to discover them.

Again, not a great initial UX. Action links/buttons are often almost hidden in smallest text & obscure locations. Persist in playful exploration. There is a lot hidden in the fine details. (eg. Message flows are under the 'Stream' tab)

It's been around for a few years so a bit surprised it is not more well known. Seems to be still alive and in use but not overly active. Haven't quite worked out its 'business model' yet? Seems very user friendly. For example you can replace the site branding with your own, complete with URL redirection to your home page etc.

Site probably needs a little updating. Looks a little 'grandmotherly' with its pastel colour schemes etc. Morphing it with the proposal driven capability of Loomio would be very interesting.

Debategraph

Try looking at an active discussion to get a better feel.

You might like

An Open Source Pattern Language (re)generative of Commons

Or

Civilization Project

@Gray I gave you just a like but your perspective is great. In fact, I raised thie idea in this discussion after looking at the tens of pages of conversations which are not active anymore and thinking that they must be linked somehow. Having the discussion tags-keywords available, would make all the inactive discussions alive again, if the tag they have is popular at a certain point in time. And by linking the discussions hopefully they would enable to create a more interesting structure for people: stories instead of independent discussions.

Implementing an add-on similar to debategraph is easier to be done using the discussion tags and timelines. Discussion tags will not just improve usability and interactivity but has a transformational potential when discussions get linked toghether. That's why I think tags at discussion level are very important; more important than tags for users or comments.

I strongly favor tag based archival organization over hierarchical categorization. I think it's important however for a group to have some collective recourse for the potentially misleading (and very messy) misuse of tags. This subject can lead to really meaty discussion.

Hey @zack Good to see you are still kicking around in Wellington.

The concept is about creating knowledge catchment areas. Past dialogue becomes an aggregated data resource to inform future conversations. Creating relational links enables better access to that repository of knowledge, detailing pathways and journey maps.

Visualisation of argument mapping is a powerful enabler of creating these catchments.

The Debategraph site has been around for awhile. Though being actively used, it doesn't appear to have had much dev love for some time.

So the data custodians may be open to synergistic discussions with Loomio. Appears to be a powerful partnering opportunity between the two software approaches. Also like that groups can personally IP brand the pages they create on Debategraph.

Possibliites??

@Gray As for past conversations informing future dialog, I've previously suggested Loomio add "Statements of fact" which someone else suggest be renamed "Agreements". These would be the foundation or building blocks of future conversations.

Loomio's ability to help gauge consensus could be used to help build blocks of text a community agrees upon giving a basis for future conversations.

Hey that's an interesting thought, @BenBurton Being a visual thinker, I get a picture of foundation stones inscribed with statements. With clickable links back to the original conversations. (Perhaps also 'graffitied' with the handle of those who participated at the time.) Visual posterity

Thanks Ben

#offtopic
@Gray Just dropping a note that the Loomio team has a small contract to collaborates with and test debate graphing apps Assembl and Litemap. You'll be hearing more soon!

@zack No offense, but wouldn't this be better addressed by voting up/down the appropriate job/task card on the Loomio (Github or Trello?) Dev board?

Heirarchical tags are awesome for information categorisation. Drupal has a great categorisation system, so a lot of lessons could be learned there.

In particular:
- multiple orthogonal tag/category taxonomies can be created (this is probably overkill for loomio)
- Tags can be free-form (new tags can be added when posts are edited)
- Tags can optionally have parents (even multiple parents), including "top level" (non-hierarchical) and related tags/synonyms.
- Tags can be edited after the fact (and posts's tags can be edited), so the hierarchy can be modified as required. Tags can be deleted and merged.

This has been coming up more and more recently, and I've spiked out a loomio tags plugin as part of a howto about how to write a plugin. So it's going to happen, I'm just not certain when yet. 😄

@jameskiesel I've followed the loomio-tags tutorial but I ran into errors I could not resolve ((LoadError) and for the 2nd run: PG::DuplicateTable: ERROR: relation "tags" already exists).

Then I deleted the previous code, downloaded loomio/loomio_tags from GitHub and there are still a lot of errors (full text is attached).
Any suggestion?

Just some headlines:

/var/lib/gems/2.3.0/gems/activesupport-4.2.5.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:274:in `require': cannot load such file -- /home/gaspar/projects/loomio/plugins/loomio_tags/models/tag (LoadError)

rake plugins:fetch
rake aborted!
Gem::LoadError: You have already activated rake 11.1.2, but your Gemfile requires rake 10.5.0. Prepending `bundle exec` to your command may solve this.

bundle exec rake plugins:fetch --trace
rake aborted!
Don't know how to build task 'plugins:fetch' (see --tasks)

ruby 2.3.1p112 (2016-04-26 revision 54768) [x86_64-linux-gnu]

Hrm, are you on the latest master branch of Loomio? I'm surprised to see 'cannot build task plugins:fetch'

It'll try to create the tags table when running use_database_table in lib/plugins/base.rb, which ensures it doesn't exist by checking ActiveRecord::Base.connection.table_exists?, so I'd check around there to see why it's continuing to attempt to create the table if it exists already.

My Loomio is about 4 weeks old, I'll update it right away.
I'll also look at this database issue if it still happens.
Thanks for the tips, fingers crossed! :)

@jameskiesel

Hmm. No luck with the latest master, it crashes right after login, regardless if password is right or not.

NoMethodError in ApplicationController#boot_angular_ui
undefined method `experiences' for #User:0x0000000d4cd198
Extracted source (around line #27):

lines 25-30
currentUserId: current_user_or_visitor.id,
currentUserLocale: current_user_or_visitor.locale,
currentUserData: (current_user_serializer.new(current_user_or_visitor, root: 'current_user').as_json),
currentUrl: request.original_url,
canTranslate: TranslationService.available?,
permittedParams: PermittedParamsSerializer.new({}),

Rails.root: /home/gaspar/projects/loomio-master
Application Trace | Framework Trace | Full Trace

app/helpers/angular_helper.rb:27:in app_config'
app/helpers/angular_helper.rb:6:inboot_angular_ui'
app/controllers/application_controller.rb:71:in `user_time_zone'

Er... rake db:migrate?

Thanks, that worked - Loomio is running, plugin is active (added puts "Tag plugin enabled" and it's displayed).

For tags, I have entered the commands below from the plugin tutorial PART2 (https://github.com/loomio/loomio/tree/master/docs/en/plugins). I don't see any tag appearing on the site.
- Also I don't see changes in the DB.

• There is a group with id 6 and a discussion with id 7. I've added tags to the DB manually (on screenshot) - I still don't see it.

What magic should be applied to make them appear? :)

~/projects/loomio-master$ rails c
Tag plugin enabled
Loading development environment (Rails 4.2.5.2)
irb: warn: can't alias context from irb_context.
irb(main):001:0> Group.last
  Group Load (0.8ms)  SELECT  "groups".* FROM "groups"  ORDER BY "groups"."id" DESC LIMIT 1
=> #<Group id: 6, name: "SiLA 2.0 Behaviors", created_at: "2016-05-24 15:29:39", updated_at: "2016-05-24 15:33:12", parent_id: 1, hide_members: false, description: "This is a subgroup for Behaviors.", archived_at: nil, memberships_count: 1, max_size: 100, cannot_contribute: false, distribution_metric: nil, sectors: nil, other_sector: nil, discussions_count: 1, country_name: nil, setup_completed_at: nil, next_steps_completed: false, full_name: "Test work group - SiLA 2.0 Behaviors", payment_plan: "undetermined", parent_members_can_see_discussions: false, key: "FqIgQyZS", can_start_group: true, category_id: nil, is_visible_to_public: false, is_visible_to_parent_members: true, discussion_privacy_options: "private_only", members_can_add_members: true, membership_granted_upon: "approval", enabled_beta_features: nil, subdomain: nil, theme_id: nil, cover_photo_file_name: nil, cover_photo_content_type: nil, cover_photo_file_size: nil, cover_photo_updated_at: nil, logo_file_name: nil, logo_content_type: nil, logo_file_size: nil, logo_updated_at: nil, members_can_edit_discussions: false, motions_can_be_edited: false, members_can_edit_comments: true, members_can_raise_motions: true, members_can_vote: true, members_can_start_discussions: true, members_can_create_subgroups: false, creator_id: 1, is_commercial: nil, is_referral: true, cohort_id: nil, default_group_cover_id: nil, subscription_id: nil, motions_count: 0, admin_memberships_count: 1, invitations_count: 0, public_discussions_count: 0, country: nil, region: nil, city: nil>
irb(main):002:0> 
irb(main):003:0* t = Tag.create(group: Group.last, name: “Test tag”, color: “#cccccc”)
irb(main):004:1> 
irb(main):005:1* Group.last.tags.first => #<Tag id: 2, group_id: 33707, name: "Test tag", color: "#cccccc", created_at: "2016-03-07 01:40:08", updated_at: "2016-03-07 01:40:08">
irb(main):006:1* 
irb(main):007:1* dt = DiscussionTag.create(discussion: Discussion.last, tag: t)
irb(main):008:1> 
irb(main):009:1* Discussion.last.tags.first => #<Tag id: 2, group_id: 33707, name: "Test tag", color: "#cccccc", created_at: "2016-03-07 01:40:08", updated_at: "2016-03-07 01:40:08">
irb(main):010:1* 
irb(main):011:1* t = Tag.create(group: Group.last, name: “Test tag”, color: “#cccccc”)
irb(main):012:2> 
irb(main):013:2* Group.last.tags.first => #<Tag id: 2, group_id: 6, name: "Test tag", color: "#cccccc", created_at: "2016-03-07 01:40:08", updated_at: "2016-03-07 01:40:08">
irb(main):014:2* 
irb(main):015:2* dt = DiscussionTag.create(discussion: Discussion.last, tag: t)
irb(main):016:2> 
irb(main):017:2* Discussion.last.tags.first => #<Tag id: 2, group_id: 6, name: "Test tag", color: "#cccccc", created_at: "2016-03-07 01:40:08", updated_at: "2016-03-07 01:40:08">

@robertguthrie could you please point me to the right direction? I'm quite stuck with the issue above.

@gaspari, Are you asking for help with the tags plugin? It's not something I'm willing to support right now, sorry!

Just to be clear, the plugin is currently an experiment. I've never touched the code and I don't know if it is complete. Maybe others in the group are trying it out and can help.

Thanks!
IMHO, having at least one complete plugin would be a critical milestone for Loomio.
To involve others in the development, a good example is essential - regardless whether these plugins will be merged later to upstream or not - it would help adaptations and therefore Loomio becoming known for a lot more people.

@robertguthrie I'm trying to reach you guys regarding paid support options but I didn't get answer in email (contact loomio org) and LinkedIn. Could you help me?
inczegaspar at gmail com

@benjaminknight @richarddbartlett Is it possible that the mail sever is down?

I've had a quick spike at discussion tagging this afternoon, here's the current state of things:

The code's also available for perusal here.l

Happy to hear feedback on design, additional features, and whatever else you'd care to name.