Discussion: appropriate length for Loomio threads?
A number of us have encountered technical difficulties keeping track of discussions on Loomio, and I'd like to explore how this interacts with discussion organization, including length and complexity of threads. If there is a relationship, I wonder whether we should set guidelines on appropriate thread length (with the idea that larger discussion should spin off new threads).
There might also be social considerations in thread size, although I suspect those might be better managed by working to regulate the structure of discussion, rather than with more numerous, smaller threads (which can also be challenging to keep track of).
My personal experience is from a laptop computer running Firefox on Debian, using household WiFi in the an urbanized part of the U.S. For me, the thread on the Anti-Meta pact (https://www.loomio.com/d/AZcJK6y2/discussion-support-the-anti-meta-fedi-pact, currently a bit over 400 replies) no longer loads all at once, nor in display order. For comparison, the moderation thread from this past winter (https://www.loomio.com/d/Ahx86rZJ/framework-for-moderation, just over 200 replies), which many also described as excessively long, loads all at once on my computer. I don't know how much of this is a function of thread size vs. thread complexity vs. perhaps some consideration in whether the thread is currently active.
From things others have said, I think there might also be technical issues with using Loomio over a phone, which might nudge things in one direction or another.
Thoughts?
Dynamic Fri 21 Jul 2023 1:17PM
@Luke Martell
Do you have thoughts on cultural practices that would make Loomio use more phone-friendly?
Sounds like not relying heavily on ranked-choice polls might be part of that?
Luke Fri 21 Jul 2023 1:22PM
@Dynamic To be honest in this case for me it was more a technical issue than a cultural one, I just could not seem to be able to drag and drop the choices into the right order on my phone. If there are people wh regularly do not have computer access and have to use a phone then I guess there is a problem, but assume this is not that common.
Éamonn O'Brien-Strain Fri 21 Jul 2023 10:23PM
@Luke I had the same problem: could not vote on my phone. Attempting to drag the votes would instead cause the window to scroll.
Also, that particular vote design was very confusing, with very long text on each choice which got truncated in such a way as you could not tell the choices apart.
However, I would not want this to in any way discouraged ranked-choice voting. As someone from Ireland where we use a variation of ranked-choice voting in all our elections, I am highly supportive.
However, the ballot design should be reasonable. For example, you could have an introductory question followed by a list of vote options that are just single words or short phrases.
Jay Fri 21 Jul 2023 1:07PM
I’ve always found Loomio very difficult to use for these reasons and more.
Dynamic Fri 21 Jul 2023 1:18PM
@Jay
Do you see this as a fundamental problem with Loomio, or do you think there are changes we could make to how we use it that would make it more useful for you?
Kévin Fri 21 Jul 2023 1:43PM
Ok, so I wrote a whole big thing about Loomio with some options and it just vanished in to thin air, so I'll add this as another negative point to Loomio. I also struggle to keep up with discussions on Loomio not because of their length, but because discussions aren't suitable within Loomio product.
I'm with two other coops (Nubo & Ouvaton) that use Discourse to hold discussions and for voting they use their in-house software.
Discourse is built specifically for conversations and it works perfectly well on desktop and mobile, is in a format that is much easier to follow. In the case of social.coop it could be an option to run Loomio for what it is good at doing (voting) and hold discussions elsewhere (not to say specifically Discourse but really any forum software is still miles ahead of Loomio for this purpose).
Dynamic Fri 21 Jul 2023 1:59PM
@Kévin
That's really interesting. Do you have sense of what the overhead is like (both technical and financial) for maintaining a Discourse community?
I also am very cognizant of the fact that social.coop already has problems with platform fragmentation, and I'm not sure what to do about that.
Kévin Fri 21 Jul 2023 2:33PM
@Dynamic in terms of moderation I can't really speak on behalf of each of them (since I'm not involved in moderating) but I only have my observations - the software handles Spam for the most part and it tends to be one or two volunteers or a member of the direction who are known to move topics on occasion and respond in an official capacity in threads. Overall considering that they are both technical products and the forums are filled with financially invested cooperative members, the overall need for moderation is low (read : people tend to behave themselves).
In terms of finance, I can't answer that they both appear to self-host (whether this is them directly or that of a participating organisation I can't say for sure) so the cost would be down to the infrastructure they already have in place or that of a separate VPS for the purpose. There isn't anything super obvious in the financials for either that indicate they're paying for the discourse hosted version.
Social.coop's version of this would be whether or not there is the infrastructure available or time to install, or if a decision would be to farm that out to Discourse's hands for 100$ a month.
I do get the fragmentisation of tools, it is always a problem unless you have a self-built solution that does everything you could possibly need, at the same time balancing that with using something that will achieve a goal or fulfill a specific purpose (eg are people not engaging with discussions because the medium to do that is just awful)
Dynamic Fri 21 Jul 2023 4:01PM
@Kévin
Thanks for the information.
I do want to note that self-hosting isn't free either, depending on how much server space the tool requires... though I imagine it's a lot less than somethink like a Mastodon instance. Still, something to think about.
And we need to have technical people with sufficient capacity to make sure the thing is up and running. (It's been noted that we aren't currently paying our TWG people.)
Luke · Fri 21 Jul 2023 11:19AM
On the last point, I was recently unable to drag choices into the right order on my phone in the vote on Threads. I was also unable to cancel my vote on the phone when I realised this problem. I guess it's not a big deal as most of us will have computer access often and maybe it was just my kind of phone. But on this occasion I was traveling and unable to access a computer which I guess could ocasionally affect some people.