Loomio bugs, issues and feedback

Thanks for a great service; it's helping flexible engagement for groups I volunteer with..

Hyphenation

How do I remove hyphenation? I can't find anything in the manual or help search.

It seems to be on automatically, and it makes some strange choices.

In long lines of text across a large window, hyphenation impedes readability rather than improving it, as there is little need to maximise use of available space. I would never, for example, split a word between lines in an A4-sized letter. I might, on a rare occasion, split a word by using a hyphen if it's a narrow column in the style of a newspaper.

I see that help items and the user manual text is not hyphenated. Why would splitting words and hyphenation be applied to user text?

I wonder what the thoughts were behind hyphenation applied to user text in discussion threads, and how there might be an option to either prevent automatic hyphenation when creating text, or to turn it off when reading threads.

Hi Adam,

We have, in our near term roadmap, a plan to build a proper "email to group" function, where your group will have an email address based on it's URL. So your-group@loomio.org can receive emails and turn them into threads.

I think you may be able to get your current plan working with the right forwarding rule in Gmail, but I don't know the correct way to achieve that.

Sorry, that's all I can do right now.

Robert

I discovered the problem. It's not Loomio, it's Gmail. Instead of forwarding the incoming emails from the account using the gmail email address, Gmail just sort of volleys the email across with no changes, so the forwarded email also seems to come direct from whoever email us, rather than our gmail account. So Loomio rightly ignores it.

Is there a work-around that I'm not thinking of here?

I thought I could make the thread public, so anyone can email onto it if they knew the Loomio reply email address, but then of course the thread would appear to the general public.

Hi Loomsters,

I am trying to set up gmail to forward incoming emails from our official email address to Loomio, in particular to get them to land in a thread. Setting up gmail to forward emails was easy, and then I added the email address into Loomio as an account in itself, so it could post.

I figured I'd used the reply-to email from a Loomio notification email on the thread, which worked when I sent an email to the thread from my email address, and then when I sent one from the gmail account I'm talking about, but then it just failed to arrive when I set it up as the forward destination.

This is the email address I'm using - maybe I should use a different set of tokens before the @ sign?

d=462014&u=983027&k=41e3ff5fd2a7f526a3420a8149338512@reply.loomio.org

As I said though, it worked for the email address once for a direct mail, but not for a forwarded email. Is there maybe a spam filter on Loomio's incoming email component that might be silently rejecting it because it's forwarded?

thanks for all that you and the team do...🙏

Great. Thanks for the support. The best thing is to just report these problems to me, and I'll just keep doing my best to make sure they can't happen again.

So great ! Thank you very much Rob ! If we can do something to prevent this kind of bug, just let we know 👌

ok, fixed. Sorry about this

Hi @Laurène - ZD Nice I'm looking into this now. Thanks for the helpful info.

Hi guys, thank you for all you're doing to get Loomio better 😊

Like some of you, our group is victim of grey boxes (computer or smartphone, it's the same 👹

It's recurrent since last year despite refresh and refresh again, even after clearing temporary storage...

What is really strange is that during one second, while the page is loading, we can see the last comment appearing (last screenshot)

but personally i found a tip : add "/100" to the url to go to the 100th message of the thread for exemple. And after i go up to read the most recent post : a bit fastidious but it works 🙈 Or click on the time line on the right when there is one ➡️

Well, one of our thread is mainly affected (see pictures) : https://www.loomio.org/d/eQ4vhFHB/communication-relations-ext-rieures

@Rob Guthrie please help 🙏

However, how to prevent this kind of bug ? Can you know where it come from ?

with latest FFox.

another oddity...when linking from email to thread and then logging in...at my end, it requires another refresh in order to gain access to react/reply...

maybe this in the same class of error u speak of?

win 8.1 on a pc...

aha adam and @Rob Guthrie ...i think i did similar steps at some stage in my intuitive thread-bothering/whack it with a hammer style amateur wrangling ... i did not have any idea but that is what i did and now the thread seems to be working fine. (just tested it again 47 secs ago.)

i did it other way around...un-nested then re-nested... i would un-nest to re-test but i need to go to b-ed

Yes it is still happening. Here's the URL - it's private but you have super privileges?

https://www.loomio.org/d/E69sV2CQ/engagement-subgroup-meeting-monday-march-29th-2021

I discovered a work-around. If I tell Loomio to set the message ordering to nested and back again, my new message will appear :)

Hi Adam, is this still happening for you? Post the URL of the thread (or private message it to me) and I'll look into it.

you must have done it in your sleep as the thread i drew attention to is working fine now.

all posts are showing, no issues. 🤔

that is why i said thank u the next day...maybe it was greg...

I've not addressed this yet! Tomorrow!

i just told rob....and he fixed it by the next day... he is the one...and greg.

excuse me for using u as an excuse to deride touchscreens. (like i need one...)

No, I'm on a laptop and saw the fleeting glimpse. What I meant by work-
around was any way that might fix the thread - adding another message
maybe, or logging out and back in?

you need to ask @Rob Guthrie about that last query...and include a link to the page that is giving u jip.(that is my sole technical term...)

i assumed it affects everyone but u asking the question makes me think i need ask other members...

i also realise that u must use a touchscreen as my F5(refresh) workaround to spot the post fleetingly would have no equivalent? i despise dislike touchscreens...for me.

Seeing this too! Or more to the point, it's what I'm not seeing 😆

Does it just affect me or does it affect everyone reading the thread? I'm wondering why it hides my message. I see other people's messages on the thread, although no-one has posted after me so maybe it's just the end message.

Is there a work-around that I can use to make it show my message?

thank u.

Strange how it was just that one thread...all others seem to be working just fine but i will keep my eyes open...🗿

Shocking. I'm sorry!

I'm working on the new thread page which will remove the whole class of errors.

aha... @Rob Guthrie i came here to report a strange bug and... it is exactly what Xavi was experiencing in previous post.

i received email notification of a new comment from mar 24 from a member

https://www.loomio.org/d/po3SUTQX/monthly-pool-meeting

it was not there ! but f5 shows it momentarily and after a few reviews i realised there was a post i had made on feb 10 that is not remaining either...last obvious post is from jan 22.

this may be part of why our recent organising of meetings has been...retrograde.

i cannot find the same happening in any other threads...hmmm...mercurial...

Hi @Xavi - are you still having issues with Loomio, I think we've fixed what you raised.

Yes! Tragic isn't it. I'll sort it today.

Hi Rob thanks for your suggestion. It's funny because there is also a bug in the thread I created here on Help. When refreshing my screen with F5, I can see your comment for less than half a second and then it vanishes, very strange.

thanks rob...i had meant to say that once the initial person completed the loop the next day then more people could be added.

all good...

Hi David.

Re-try your add member process today. We've fixed a few things.

Yes, unfortunately the realtime collab editor has not graduated out of beta yet, it was this feature that was going to also provide the "you cant lose your work" feature. We've got another approach to try.

Please assume that my spelling errors are intentional. Bugs are not, however.

@Rob Guthrie love new features...but the direct thread,once setup for one member, could (or would?) not find members for additional entry. the other person has not yet seen this thread.

and the other dayish...i found the 2.4.0 release notes and they said that our comments would no longer be lost...i tested this and could not find a situation where they were retained. what was i doing wrong? or is that out of date?

also spelling error on github release notes...Thread and Poll edit notificaitons

pedantry rains supreme!! 😀...🙊...🗿

ps i wasnt sure where else to send this heads up...

I'm sorry you are having this experience!

I'm always shaving time off the load process. I don't have historical data, but I can tell you there has been a number of ways we've improved this recently and I will keep it up. Hopefully it will start to feel light and snappy for you soon.

My main issue with Loomio 2.0 is that it is just too slow. It seems to take ages for it to load. At least in Firefox on Ubuntu and Android anyway.

thanks for raising this.. I'm slowly processing it in my head and trying to see if there is an easy way to do it.

@Rob Guthrie
When I say “anybody”, I mean “anybody of the group”, of course.

Hi Rob.

Thanks for your fast answer.

I agree: The "You have a new notification in your loomio group" version of email notifications would be fairly horrible. 😉

But it should allow not to share content with companies we don't trust.

Maintainig a white or black list is not feasible and should probably not make sense, because my white list could have elements of your black list (or the inverse).

Simply, the administrator of a group could have the possibility to select the option “don't include any content of this group in notification mails”, so nobody could be responsible (at least by mistake) of leaking content to his (bad) mail provider.

And maybe Loomio could limit the sending of such empty messages at a rate of once a day?

As I write this, i think of another option that could do the job another way:

Let the second part of all the user's addresses visible to anybody (in my case, you could now that I'm at “…@dossogne.be”, but nothing more). This would allow anybody to say that an address is not O.K. even without knowing what the exact address is.

Maybe easier and… less horrible? 😀

François

Hi Fran. Thanks for bringing this up - it sure is complicated eh. I think there is a lot of work to be done here, and the least of it is software development.

I'd be very interested to learn what other SASS businesses or hosts are doing to address this issue. Surely there must be some consensus building within blog posts from other products/orgs as they get to grips with this.

The "You have a new notification in your loomio group" version of email notifications would be fairly horrible..but could be done, but then one would need to maintain a list of bad hosts, or good hosts, or the user must enable it or.. it's just a rubbish job - and any work I do at this stage does not feel well informed enough to confidently address the problem.

Hi @robertguthrie ,

I hope I'm not busy in a wrong discussion, as version 2.0 is now an old one.

I'm a user of Framavox, an instance of Loomio presently running version 2.1.9.

I'm wondering if i'm the only one mentionning the problem explained here above.

I think it could be an issue for many users in the European Union : on july, 16th 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union stated it was illegal to upload personal data of european citizens to services under U.S. jurisdiction.

If an organization runs or uses a trusted Loomio instance, everything is in place to offer the needed confidentiality. But if a single participant of a group uses a “wrong” mail service (e.g. Gmail, which EULA states Google reads the content of the mails and is operated by a U.S. corporation…), all messages posted in the group are exposed to inspection by people and companies that the other participants don't want to trust.

I can't know how much work this would be for you, but even the possibility to block all notifications by mail could be useful. (Though I think a neutral reminder, as proposed above, would be necessary to avoid that people just forget about checking their Loomio groups.)

At this time, the only possibility to avoid releasing content to Gmail, Hotmail, etc. is to ask the group members to use a trusted mail provider… and to trust them.

Thanks for your time and, again, for Loomio!

I'd say to keep it simple: simply allow the manager of a group or sub-group to choose for No Content At All In Any Mail Notification as an option. From there on, all email notifications would be limited to “Somebody mentioned you in a post” or “your are required to answer a poll in the group …”, but absolutely no content at all, in a way that Google (who's privacy policy says: “We will read your mails”) and other operators could not know what information is exchanged (or even about what people talk in this group).

If activists or people caring for their privacy are interested in such a functionality, I think even the title of a discussion or a poll could be too much. Same rationale for context and details (they will discover it by opening Loomio, where “Unread threads” is very useful).

The group name is the only information that could be necessary or useful to go and find the useful post or poll.

Allowing to choose if usernames and discussion title could be an advantage, because it allows to knows whether it's an important or urging matter, but this shouldn't make Loomio a too complicated thing to use. (Une usine à gaz, as we say in French 😉)

Thanks for your attention and help.

Hi Fran, yes this is possible.

What information would you say is necessary and what can you leave out?

Discussion title, poll title?

discussion context and details?

Group name?

User names?

Privacy in mail notifications… to others

The question of a member on our Framavox group could be interesting for some of Loomio's users.
In short:

How do I prevent other members of my groups to let Loomio send the content of my posts to their mailbox, hosted by companies I don't trust or I don't want to make the life easy.

It's true that you don't know which mail provider the others are using and that mail, by design, is less secure than a Loomio service.

I searched the documentation and I found how I can prevent notifications to my mailbox, but I think there is no mean to prevent the content of a (sub-)group to be sent to anybody.

Don't you think it could be a useful functionality to forbid the content to be integrated into the notification mails, as an option for a group or subgroup? One would receive something like “X mentioned you in the discussion …”, but not the post itself.
Do you think this could be feasible?

Thanks in advance!

Thanks for the detailed report, I'll get onto it

Second time this week where I've had unexpected/ incorrect behavior from Send Poll modal's quick-select (Members of thread, Members of group)

In the most recent case, upon starting a poll, the modal incorrectly showed that there were only (5) members of group (there are 7); clicking invite to vote again, now I see (6) as depicted below along with a funny (-1) not yet invited. Detail: 6 of the 7 members are Admins of this subgroup.

The earlier case was also in a subgroup of Enspiral – Members. Whether I clicked "Undecided people" or "Members of Members", the number was short of the truth. (To reproduce, go to the most recent Membership proposal)

I am using Firefox (latest) on Ubuntu 18.04 with KDE

there I had to hit tab to get the paperclip then shift-tab to come back to here. I had to use keyboard arrow keys for that, the mouse cursor couldn't do it.

EDIT: here's the recording, attached gif

could you share a video about this problem Aaron? Also what browser and OS? (sorry if you've already shared this, I'm replying by email)

I'm still having the problem where I can't use my mouse cursor to move the text cursor in a comment field! If I click on the comment field, the text loses focuses. I can't select text with the mouse cursor either. No interaction works with the mouse except for outside of the text entry field. The only way to get the field active again is to tab-through the items until it is active again.

Hi Fran, sorry for my slow reply. Yes, we've seen this but are not yet able to bring back the save draft functionality we had in Loomio 1, sorry.

Reminder… (“Dealing with unposted comments”)

Hello,

I don't know if this is necessary, but I didn't notice any reaction to my post in objet and it might have been posted on a wrong time. I'd be happy to know if you saw it already.

Thanks in advance !

Right, mark as read used to be called dismiss, it does not actually mark stuff as read, maybe it should.. But it notes that until there is more stuff, you're not interested.

I think we've learned from this UX, that we want actual mark as read, plus a good mute until X feature.

Repost of a bug a nested under another bug for clarity (link to that post)

Bug = Unread messages keep reappearing even after I click read

To reproduce: Last week I used mark as read on a thread that had a lot of old comments that occurred before I joined group.

There was a new comment, and I went and read it.

Subsequently, I saw it was unread... I went in again and it brought me to the same new comment, but I also could see that there was "106 unread"

I've marked it as read and after hard refresh still appears read... I'll update here if I see anything else and try and get the console too.

@Rob Guthrie added the link to this one above ^