[Board] feedback on Loomio

[Tim Sutton]

Hi

> On 15 Sep 2016, at 8:10 AM, Anita Graser <anitagraser at gmx.at> wrote:
> 
> Thanks for providing feedback.
> 
> Members of the group receive notifications of activity. It is possible to change the settings so that everyone can join without asking.
> 
> It shouldn't be too much to ask to sign in. After all, I've heard the internet has an issue with spam.
> 
> 


Just chipping in from the side lines to give some comments about my experiences using loomio:

* I should mention that it is open source https://github.com/loomio/loomio - by using it at loomio.org you are just using a hosted version
* A simple solution to Jeff's concern may be just to hold the discussion on the mailing list and then reserve loomio just for the mechanics of voting.
* I think it would be a really nice win to be able to go to one place to see a list of all the decisions that OSGEO ever tabled, who voted, what they voted and what the outcome was. Do you have that now? If so I couldn't find it doing a quick search. Email and +1 / 0 / -1 is really an intolerably bad solution for back referencing decisions.
* Since QGIS was referenced, I would like to clarify that we pride ourselves in doing almost everything in the open. We have a very low traffic PSC private mailing list for specific uses like when a potential sponsors asks to engage with us confidentially, but everything else we do in the open. We avoid back room decisions, there is an open invitation for anyone to attend our PSC meetings, we publish all our minutes etc. I do not believe that loomio constitutes a 'closed' approach to governance - rather I think it provides a much more transparent way to see what decisions are made.


That said loomio has some down sides IMHO too:

* it only supports binary questions
* they try to support their platform by asking your users to donate if you choose not to buy subscription hosting
* we still tend to do +1/0/-1 voting in mailing lists, github issues, and in our PSC minutes - old habits die hard I guess. That's not loom's fault.


Loomio may not be the best solution and it would be nice to know if anyone out there can propose something better. I would suggest to at least give it a try before panning it outright - maybe the behaviour you want from the platform is there and you just need to tweak it to do what you need....

Regards

Tim
—









Tim Sutton

Co-founder: Kartoza
Project chair: QGIS.org

Visit http://kartoza.com <http://kartoza.com/> to find out about open source:

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Kartoza is a merger between Linfiniti and Afrispatial

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