Off-Topic Tags To Make Comments Hidden By Default

Who sets the tag though?

Maybe a thing like branched discussions, where a comment can be migrated to a new discussion, and a link is left in its place?

As I said, the person sets the tag themselves, recognising that their reply, although relevant to the preceding comment, is unrelated to the main discussion topic. Or a coordinator/ moderator sets the tag if the group has agreed to give them permission to do that. Branching or 'forking' discussions has been discussed on and off but has remained in the too hard basket. This proposal may be easier to implement, and go some way to solving the same problem (info overload, unfocused discussions).

My current thought on this problem is that a coordinator should be able to split off sections of the thread into a separate thread if they feel the need. I'd imagine we'd allow a branch of comments to be siphoned off into a new thread, and add a 'branched' thread item to the original discussion, with a link to the new thread.

We've also got some thoughts roiling about involving tagging and self-categorization, but I think they're more at the thread level at the moment, rather than the comment level.

The Enspiral refactor work has really pulled out some interesting info on how people want the tool to work, and I think we'll be getting a ton of great direction on new feature dev coming out of that. Once beta is decommissioned (it's coming quite soon), we'll be able to make a tonne of this kind of stuff happen.

When feasible, I think it's fundamentally better to give users the tools to self-organize as peers than to rely upon designated coordinators for any specific community functions. Self-organizinng tools are likely to add a layer of complexity in most cases-- for instance, allowing peers to endorse or promote other peers' suggested actions-- but I believe they're worth close consideration in the evolution of Loomio.

This tickles my anarchist bone, and I made the same argument myself during the genesis of another project when I was even more blissfully unaware of how network infrastructure actually works than I am now. It's very hard to do in practice though.

Let's take the example of the power to delete a group from a Loomio server. At the moment, the coordinators hold that power. It's risky to let every group member have permission, in case one person ragequits and decides to take revenge on the group by deleting their Loomio, or even joins the group just to sabotage them by deleting it. You could code in a need for a proposal to achieve unanimous consensus, or perhaps supermajority, before the power can be used, but there are so many variables to establishing quorum (minimum participation level for the decision to be considered an expression of the group will). Worse, it risks turning every admin housekeeping task into a lengthy political exercise, which can pull a group's energy away from its core goals and projects that serve them, and leave them exhausted, dispirited, and inward-looking.

I've thought exhaustively about the concerns you're noting, partly because it's in my interest as a severely overburdened social media admin. I believe that there are reasonable potential treatments for all such issues, with some simple but uncommon content-rating tools and community protocols.

Unfortunately I don't have a document which aggregates my latest thinking on those matters, but if you're curious, feel free to check out this not-so-old, but outdated model for distributed governance and administration

I've been meaning to give that document a fundamental review and overhaul recently-- and if that goes well, to distribute it broadly for comments-- but haven't found the time.