Contact a member directly

I agree! Having a private message system would be really good.

I really like this idea
the bar across the top might not be able to hold this as the interface has to be clear and simple there.

a good place to start this just to trial the concept could be on a user's profile page e.g. https://www.loomio.org/u/IcwYPLls/alanna-krause

something like this would take a few days to build correctly. There is actually quite a lot of design work to do before starting.

If you'd like to really help out, can you sketch (on paper or digital) a movie-style story-board of exactly what each user would see at each step?

@philippeponge a start of what i imagine:

• [scene1] : on profile page of Philippe I click 'send a message'
• [scene2] : I am taken to a form where they can enter a message to Philippe
• [scene3] : Philippe receives an email / notification in top bar that he's got a message from me, and he clicks a link
• [scene4] : Philippe arrives on the page with the message and sees .......
• [scene5] : .............

above descriptions with drawings is the really challenging part of completing the idea.

Part of the Loomio 1.0 design is to have group-less discussions: you just start a thread and invite the right people in.

So that will provide the functionality of private messaging: just invite one person into a private discussion. It will be interesting to see whether that user experience makes sense though, it may make sense to have a dedicated messaging system as well.

I reckon starting a whole discussion for every private message would get pretty noisy if it all ended up on your dashboard. But if were the same structure in like, a different tab that could work. How sweet would it be if you started a one on one discussion that you then realized needed to be a group discussion, you could invite more people in and eventually turn it into a decision with a whole group of people? Like Conversation > Discussion > Decision

I like the idea of being able to go to another user's page, click a button to send them a private message, and have it delivered to their email address. If they want to reply, either:
1) the message I send supplies them my email address and they can reply as normal
2) their reply goes back to Loomio and is auto-redirected to my email address. We don't get to see each other's email addresses until we choose to share them

Option 1 is simpler to develop but some people may have privacy concerns. Option 2 is much more work for developers, and may require anyone running a Loomio instance to also run an email server with all the spam filtering, virus scanning, and other overhead that involves.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, please, PLEASE, do not replicate email. Email can create information floods. Loomio does not need to be yet another place I have to check email.

What do people think about a "reply in private" button. So you could reply within a discussion but just have the author of the original comment see it?

I like Richard's group-less discussion idea personally. Although yeah if it was in a separate section to normal discussions that would be useful. It would also be useful if attachments would be put into it.

Basically, an internal Loomio email system.