I am very much for a two-step process as outlined by Sean. I mean, the group currently has 'only' 45 members, and I am having trouble keeping up with the discussions as it is...

If we're going to open Loomio up to more people, we'll need to work out a system re creating new proposals, groups and so on, so that this only happens in agreed circumstances; or we'd need to as Loomio to work out a system of deciding how many email notifications we receive, as I can't see any way of doing this. I've been getting loads of emails over the past week - once there are more people, this could increase exponentially if one of the above two isn't implemented.

I guess we'll be able to turn of mail notifications, loomio is a very young project ,)

For duplicates I'd say just pointing to the old discussion, waiting a day and then letting the admin(s) delete the whole discussion (is that possible already Sean?) is the way to go as long as we can handle it. If we outgrow of that we can get back to the issue and see how loomio has developed till then.

I think it's great talking about these things!

@Sean: First let me say thanks for your efforts for starting this presence here on Loom. I think it's a great tool with a lot of potential for our community.

I can see it would be too difficult to monitor whether someone has an account here or not, so I misspoke. Perhaps we say we encourage an account. I think that Jason is right. Not everyone is going to participate here.

And even if people come from the outside who don't have an account, don't you think eventually they will want one? So I think I will actually be more radical and let anyone who wants to be a member be a member. Maybe the only "requirement" is that an existing member must invite you in.

I mean IRC doesn't require an invite. You just create an account. And if things need to move into a private discussion, people can create new groups to convene and speak more privately. I think that is possible here too.

Do people get out of hand in IRC? Do people survive? I think they do.

I will admit that we will require organizing tools to quell the chaos if it becomes detrimental. Like allowing me to set priority tags to the activity here or subscribing to discussions, I'm not sure.

It is hard to keep up on discussions here, but that is because of the UI, not because of the amount of content. If there is a lot of content, could it mean that people are bursting with things to say or to suggest? Why not give it the space?

I'm sure we can advocate, making our voices heard to Loom what changes we would like to see here to help us do better. And if you think about it, if we did that, then we are doing EXACTLY what I'd like to see happen at Diaspora. For users to have some say in what would help us do what we want to do.

Since Loom is committed to creating a tool that accommodates political discourse, I'm sure they want our feedback. They do not presume that they know ahead of time if the tool will work or not. They want us to use it and they want us to succeed in using their tool. At least that is my take on it. :)

@Flaburgan: I agree that there is need for more organization. I think it will come, naturally! :)

Using Loom for discussion about where the community goes and where the D* tool goes is better than discussing these things on the stream, IMO. There is a better archival process here, and on the stream things melt away.

That does not mean I think people should be dissuaded from bring concerns up on the stream. Only that Loom becomes the record of voices, about how we feel about things, and what actions we look to take.

In the past, using the stream ended up causing bad feeling and a sense of being ignored for some folks. I'm not saying it matters anymore what the particulars were back then, but why not learn from our collective mistakes?

If I sit and think about it, the main cause for miscommunications is not giving a space for people to discuss.

I do think promoting awareness by posting hashtags on the stream to let people know that there is a discussion happening here is a great idea!

Hey yo, bumping an old thread.

Loomio introduced better privacy controls, and I think ours need "opening up" since now it's possible :)

Right now we accept anyone who requests to join, but now Loomio also allows "open" setting - which wasn't available before. I propose we change to that.

I also propose we set "Discussion privacy" to "Public only" - we don't need private talking here - let's stay transparent. This setting was also not available before.

Image attached of what I propose the new settings would be (arrow=new setting).

Can we skip waiting the 3 days and just close the vote and open up the group already? :)

We should post on our diaspora blog: https://joindiaspora.com/posts/4246552

@flaburgan or someone else - want to make a quick post on the blog too?

(or maybe just copy the status message :P - I wrote it but I've no access to the blog)

I'm not convinced this needs publishing on the blog. It's something of interest to people who are already in Diaspora and want to get more involved, so publishing from Diaspora HQ as you've done is the most appropriate thing.

Anyone who gets into Diaspora in the future won't have encountered the sign-up hurdle to Loomio so won't need a blog post to tell them that it's now open.

I'm taking the approach that more communication is better than less. Do you know who reads the blog? What's the purpose of the blog? Sure there was less communication in the past. We should blog about anything that we are passionate about...

@goob I agree with @diaspeu ... more communication means a more active looking organisation.

There's also the danger of providing too much information, bombarding people with things they don't need to know about.

That's why I suggested here that we discuss properly what belongs on the blog (and what doesn't) before we really get going with blogging. It's only a few days since the last blog post, so it's not exactly as though a new post is needed urgently. Let's plan first and post later, rather than the other way around.

If this is agreed to be something that should appear on the blog, it will need writing in a different way from the DHQ post, I think, as it's a different audience (will need an intro to Loomio and why and how we use it). At the moment I'm afraid this isn't something I could take on.

it certainly needs to be reformulated but I think it's a nice thing to point that we are open to discussion and suggestions. So I would vote for a post about that on the blog.

If someone wants to add it on the pad and work on it, ping me here when it will be ready and I will be happy to post it.

Hy there :-)

I've just a 1 or 2 hours ago heard about loomio and this diaspora group the first time. This morning I put a public post about the changes since the last diaspora-update in connection with the notifications. I posted a question, because I wasn't sure if the notification's behavior is just locally (in my browser only) another than before or not. One or two comments later I knew that it had changed globally - so I posted my oppinion and again some comment later somebody said : "Most people of those whom got asked, wanted it this way" So my next question was : "How can that be ? I haven't been asked for anything at all - where is that place ? Where can I tell my oppinion about something in connection with Diaspora ?" Then he gave me the link to loomia. The first I wanted to do : writing a thread an ask about this topicm but I found this one so I write in here - I hope it's ok ?? There were very different oppinions in here about who should be allowed to be here (feels very strange). I'm not in anger or something like this. I came here, because there are some things on Diaspora I'd like to discuss and because I'd like to take part in here as far as I can. I'm not really a developer, but I not so very far away from some technical backgrounds. I know .. or better said : I understand why you think sceptically about to invite everybody, because of much information, because of perhaps angry users who ask huge things in here and so on and so .... but the other side is - in this example I just write my personal oppinion :
users (me) are sitting there and have to realize, that things on Diaspora change. Some things are good and others are not so good - and the first thing in my head is : What a kind of community is it in fact, if so many users write posts about their dislikes and almost nobody sees it ? You know what I mean ? It feels strange and somehow it hurts if not everybody is asked for oppinion about changes and existing features. Again : I just can speak for myself, but I would like to part of it

Hi, @rebekacatalina.

There were very different oppinions in here about who should be allowed to be here (feels very strange).

What makes you say this? Every vote in the proposal to open up membership of Loomio has been for that motion. The only reason membership has not been completely open up to this point is because that was not possible in the Loomio platform, not because of a decision by Diaspora project members.

You're very welcome (as is every Diaspora community member) to take part in discussions in Loomio. Please note, however, that Loomio is for forward planning decisions about the direction of the project and the development of the software; it is not for user feedback. Have a look at our guide to using Loomio for more information.

We're trying at the moment to improve communication with the wider community through the diaspora* HQ account and the project blog, and do try to respond to user feedback given in comments on posts by the diaspora* HQ account.

Ok, thank you very much - sorry then I've missunderstood things a bit :-) Sorry for that :-) You know - I just today heard about this place and I though : why the hell is this place so hidden and not mentioned publicly ?! :D But ok, understand ;)
So yeah I'll just be in the background for the next time. Reading and so on - I'm interested in helping as well for sure, but I'm not so sure, that I really can help - currently I'm learning in several directions and my interests are currently gettin' more deep into linux systems and several stuff with encryptions and so on. Some years ago I started to learn webdevelopment as well - but ... so I stopped it because of some private reasons, but I remember a post on Diaspora by Fla, that there are possibilities to help with already quite simple things - and yes.. it's been a quite long time sinced I coded web stuff but perhaps I also could do something ? I would need some time to get back into web-codes and I'd have to begin slowly, but I would like to give it a try somewhen as well :) I not sure that my programming knowledge is enough, but perhaps we can talk about it and give it try somewhen :)

Loomio definitely isn't kept secret - see posts in Diaspora such as this one and blog posts such as this one, and this wiki page.

It would be great if you want to contribute. If you want to try contributing code, have a look at our guide to getting started and then check out the issues marked as suitable for newcomers. There are also lots of other ways to contribute. Whatever you feel you can do, your contribution will be welcome!