Mark proposals as passed or failed

There's definitely a need for a check back of some kind as far as 'How did this proposal go? Was it implemented? Was it followed up on?' or basically 'How good was this decision?'

Then you can start tracking really interesting things like 'Do proposals with more engagement result in better decisionmaking?' or 'Are decisions which have lots of discussion generally better or worse than ones which have more immediate consensus?'

These are important concerns. I want to point out that a given discussion could well lead to more than one valid proposal. Proposals arise creatively from discussion. Each proposal may relate to the original topic/discussion in various ways.

Thus, I don't think of proposals or policies as 'replacing' previous ones. Of course they can be written that way, if desired. I think people should explicitly articulate if they're trying to override any previous agreement.

Sure, but it is kind of how the software shows it: past proposals are stuffed down the bottom, and harder to see the details of. Perhaps it would be good to be able to manually set the visibility/visual importance of each proposal?

Are you using the list of past outcomes to derive a snapshot of current policy? I feel like it's just not ideal for that. What would be nice is a markdown-enabled page with the same privacy settings as group discussions where you can keep track of all current policies that you want all members to know. It's like the difference between pages and posts on a blog.

@presley you have a great concept for keeping track of 'current policies', but it can often be hard to assess whether or not a former proposal now constitutes an official group policy or not. That depends, of course, on exactly how a proposal was phrased, and any explicit or implicit group standards for whether or not a proposal has 'succeeded'. For instance, some groups may feel that a proposal has succeeded if no one 'blocked' it, regardless of the level of participation/'voting'. Others might allow one or more blocks, but require a quorum, a minimum percentage of 'Agree' votes, etcetera. The possibilities are practically endless, and I think they really depend on each group's collective properties.

By the way, I've never really understood the ability of a proposal's creator to publish an 'outcome' which others may or may not agree with. This is one of the issues I've never found time to research thoroughly or to inquire about.

Having muddied things up thusly, I want to say that I do think Loomio should provide some archiving/repository functionality in the long run. I think that any such tool(s) will ultimately depend on the good faith efforts of group coordinators. However, I suggest that it will be good practice for non-hierarchical groups to assume collective responsibility for determining which proposals determine official policy. (Instead of just passively letting group coordinators determine what is and isn't 'official'.)

Can't anyone publish or edit proposal outcomes? Or did I just think that because I'm a coordinator?

By the way, I’ve never really understood the ability of a proposal’s creator to publish an ‘outcome’ which others may or may not agree with.

If the group has well-defined standards on whether a proposal has passed or not then it should be relatively easy to write an outcome that accurately reflects on the result of the proposal - and even easier for someone else to look at the results and compare them to the description of the outcome.

However, it would be nice to make the outcome be a choice of something like "It clearly passed"/"It clearly did not pass"/"Unclear; needs more discussion" with a box to optionally provide more details about the outcome.

If the group has well-defined standards on whether a proposal has passed or not then it should be relatively easy to write an outcome that accurately reflects on the result of the proposal

I think that's a core subject @zl4bv , and I don't want or expect for Loomio to tell everyone how to run their groups, nor to 'force' people to run their groups a certain way on account of software mechanics.

@presley I don't seem to have the ability to edit others' proposal outcomes.

I think the ability of people to 'officially' (through the special mechanic of 'outcome') interpret the 'results' of everyone's final (at the time of the poll's closing) positions is unnecessary and, well, I just don't understand it. To me personally, the outcome of a proposal is what it is: there was a specific verbal formulation, and a specific proportion of Agree/Abstain/Disagree/Block; and any further interpretations are strictly personal or, if meant to be 'collective', are entirely subject to further discussion and/or further proposals.

So I guess the real question is how do you deal with two proposals that are mutually exclusive, but that both have borderline positive decisions? e.g. both have 75% upvotes, where the group has agreed that 75% modified consensus is the way to operate? Do you just assume that the newest proposal is the one in operation? What happens if someone opens a new proposal, and the older ones drop off the radar?

Interesting view, @gregorycassel. I'm torn. I see the potential for people to take too much license in interpreting the proposal, but there's also a lot of concern about lengthy discussions, and the outcomes are one place where summarization is possible. When a proposal passes this might not be so important, but, like unhappy families, failed proposals can each fail in their own way, making a summary really useful. Maybe outcomes could have a flag button where a user could object to the interpretation.

@naught101, wouldn't groups deal with those questions in the new proposal? Are you worried they'll just forget that they previously made a different decision?

One thing that might help with this is the idea of "pinning" discussions to the top of the group, which is already in the backlog. I have also heard of people creating subgroup for "official policy" outcomes, etc, and moving discussions there. I think this area is generally one where each group will have different needs, and Loomio should be as flexible as possible.