Multi Proposal at the same time.

@barrybaker I'm sure you're not thick, but the screenshots are just using 'editing comments' as an example discussion. I've added a bunch of captions there now which I hope will make things clearer.

Our group at Commongorund Co-op was just saying this is a feature we need.

@benjaminknightloo, @richarddbartlett, @vivienmaidabornloo

It looks like the decision was that "multi proposals" were a good idea - 4 years ago. Did this ever get implemented? What is the current status / where can I find out more?
Thanks
Oli

there's some changes coming very soon to the proposal functionality. Including multiple proposals open at the same time and different stiles of proposals! :)

Coooool thanks @natilombardo
When you say "soon" is it possible to give any dates?
And can you tell me where is the best place to subscribe to be made aware of these changes when they arrive?
Best
Oli

I think it's fine to give users tools & let them decide how to use them. However, I also think that it's generally unwise for groups to attach more than one proposal at a time to the same topic-- mainly because of the sequential stream of comments per topic.

So, I'm kind of wondering whether the Loomio team is planning to retain "one proposal at a time" as a default, or maybe even a recommendation? Or, has the Loomio team thinking on this subject changed considerably in recent times? (Historically, I believe that many people were aligned with the "one proposal at a time" concept.)

We're going with the principal that It's up to the facilitator to decide how to use the tool. If though experience we find that there should be some limits, we'll look at how to implement them.

It's in beta testing and we can turn it on for specific groups.. send me your group id (rob@loomio.org) and we can enable it for you.

Thanks for the explanation Rob. Well, many tools including Loomio provide users' manuals. If Loomio receives a deeply new feature such as multiple proposals per topic, I think it'd be super helpful to offer related guide material(s), perhaps at https://help.loomio.org/en/proposals.html .

And of course, per my prior comment, I'd personally recommend a typical guideline of one live proposal per Loomio topic.

If anyone effectively uses a decision-making workflow with multiple proposals per topic, I'd love to hear about it. It could be highly relevant to some of my papers such as Agreement-Based Organization.

There's a tension between two goals in the question of whether to use multiple proposals per topic. On one hand, keeping to one works well with the ethos of consensus and orients towards refining a given idea to be the best version of that idea it can be.
On the other, using multiple allows for the exploration of different approaches. Sometimes the first idea someone comes up with is workable enough that if the alternative is "DON'T do that" (ie, implicitly, do nothing), then it is clearly worth doing--and yet, at the same time it is far from an optimum solution and if other ideas could be considered alongside it something better might be found. The dark side of an orientation towards consensus can be an orientation towards groupthink . . .

Exploring different approaches is vitally important. I personally recommend that ideas are explored thoroughly prior to formal proposals or instead of formal proposals. I'm glad that Loomio is currently expanding users' options for co-creative approaches via new polling types.

Whether or not a formal proposal is intended to create democracy or groupthink is IMO a deep cultural issue for each network or community.