If democraciaOS is not available/up to date I would suggest investigating https://www.loomio.org/ - They are open source under the GPL-license.
There are other participatory democracy software out there that exist but I don’t know many that are Open Source.
On Fri, Jul 17, 2020 at 5:03 PM Kev M <kevm@mailbox.org> wrote:
There are other participatory democracy software out there that exist but I don’t know many that are Open Source.
There is also CONSUL, which was developed as open source by Madrid City Council, transferred to an independent Foundation and is now used worldwide. Italo Vignoli is a member of their Board of Directors. See https://consulproject.org/en/
All the same, I don’t think it’s necessarily a good thing to bring thousands of voters into a decision making process where they have no responsibilities to moderate their exercise of rights. It will just become factional and partisan based on external agendas.
I believe that it is crucially important to allow as many voices as possible to be heard, and the consequent monitoring process is greatly facilitated by the implementation of a tool such as Decidim so, together BoD & Community can decide about the issues that matter to us.
On Fri, Jul 17, 2020 at 6:19 PM Daniel Armando Rodriguez <drodriguez@documentfoundation.org> wrote:
El 2020-07-17 13:20, Simon Phipps escribió:
There is also CONSUL, which was developed as open source by Madrid City
Council, transferred to an independent Foundation and is now used
worldwide. Italo Vignoli is a member of their Board of Directors. See
https://consulproject.org/en/All the same, I don’t think it’s necessarily a good thing to bring
thousands of voters into a decision making process where they have no
responsibilities to moderate their exercise of rights. It will just
become factional and partisan based on external agendas.I believe that it is crucially important to allow as many voices as
possible to be heard, and the consequent monitoring process is greatly
facilitated by the implementation of a tool such as Decidim so, together
BoD & Community can decide about the issues that matter to us.
Please don’t confuse “making voices heard”, which is generally good, with “offering them a vote”, which is generally problematic if they do not carry any responsibilities upon which their votes might rely and especially if they are willing to vote for ideas they don’t fully understand on the basis only of personality or identity. Decisions made in that way have bad outcomes.
S.
–
Well, misunderstanding of ideas can be avoided simply by communicating in such a way that no aspect is taken for granted when making the request for feedback.
This is not about offering to vote (wich can be disabled in Decidim which I know better than other tools) but about providing a support to a comment. It's very different because that allows people not fluent in English to give an educated opinion and partipate. It's easy when you're fluent to express yourself, and it takes hours to one who is not, most of the time he will abandon before.
Cheers
Sophie
+100 
I have no problem with tools to get polls / feedback from our userbase;
that's great =)
Of course, for decisions - we are a meritocracy^W doers-decide project;
so having some separate means for the members to easily inform the board
/ discuss and/or give their input / views on things would also be
extremely valuable. Hopefully some clear separation would make
membership - and more importantly the contribution necessary to achieve
it more attractive to people too (perhaps).
My 2 cents,
Michael.
Well, the membership base is small enough (221 to date) to condition feedback to that group only.
Ideas can add up, grow and take shape with a wider audience. That is the spirit behind the initiative.
Please don’t confuse “making voices heard”, which is generally good, with “offering them a vote”, which is generally problematic if they do not carry any responsibilities upon which their votes might rely and especially if they are willing to vote for ideas they don’t fully understand on the basis only of personality or identity. Decisions made in that way have bad outcomes.
+1 for the above
Sometimes I think, don’t make it to to complex. As there number of people contributing to the discussion oversee able. So maybe some kind of news article/news board of system; An introduction article [Starting point] + comment system like this (not sure how it’s called); https://tweakers.net/reviews/7694/last/android-11-kleine-verfijningen-zonder-zoete-verrassingen.html#reacties. The starting point can be created by anybody registered. The response and the voting makes it easier to keep track of important input (read-up) and what people support or not. For tapping into the general public I would prefer a a polling system. Some background story [XXX] What do you think about Community Edition. Great Idea! Not so, because… [44 characters or maybe few more to keep it short]. If the want to give more input they should go you can go to www…
The ultimately decision should me made at the board. The community tools intended to gather input (and should communicated this way). Note: still having issues managing the topic flow. The topic evolved more or less from ‘Personal edition’ to “Community edition”. Where a group lagging still responded to ‘Personal Edition’ while I got the feeling that we moved on already. Another issue is managing people like me, chaotic thinkers. After the Commodity Edition /Enterprise it started I to question the Edition (which I initially supported). With next step objecting against Edition terminology within the current context. And I’m surely having issues to ‘grasp’ the positions. What I needs to clarified.
Telesto
Op 17-7-2020 om 19:32 schreef Simon Phipps:
On Fri, Jul 17, 2020 at 6:19 PM Daniel Armando Rodriguez <drodriguez@documentfoundation.org> wrote:
El 2020-07-17 13:20, Simon Phipps escribió:
There is also CONSUL, which was developed as open source by Madrid City
Council, transferred to an independent Foundation and is now used
worldwide. Italo Vignoli is a member of their Board of Directors. See
https://consulproject.org/en/All the same, I don’t think it’s necessarily a good thing to bring
thousands of voters into a decision making process where they have no
responsibilities to moderate their exercise of rights. It will just
become factional and partisan based on external agendas.I believe that it is crucially important to allow as many voices as
possible to be heard, and the consequent monitoring process is greatly
facilitated by the implementation of a tool such as Decidim so, together
BoD & Community can decide about the issues that matter to us.Please don’t confuse “making voices heard”, which is generally good, with “offering them a vote”, which is generally problematic if they do not carry any responsibilities upon which their votes might rely and especially if they are willing to vote for ideas they don’t fully understand on the basis only of personality or identity. Decisions made in that way have bad outcomes.
S.
–
Simon Phipps
Meshed Insights Ltd
Please don't confuse "making voices heard", which is generally good, with "offering them a vote", which is generally problematic if they do not carry any responsibilities upon which their votes might rely and especially if they are willing to vote for ideas they don't fully understand on the basis only of personality or identity. Decisions made in that way have bad outcomes.
+1 for the above
Sometimes I think, don't make it to to complex.
The intention is completely the opposite
As there number of people contributing to the discussion oversee able. So maybe some kind of news article/news board of system; An introduction article [Starting point] + comment system like this (not sure how it's called); https://tweakers.net/reviews/7694/last/android-11-kleine-verfijningen-zonder-zoete-verrassingen.html#reacties. The starting point can be created by anybody registered. The response and the voting makes it easier to keep track of important input (read-up) and what people support or not. For tapping into the general public I would prefer a a polling system. Some background story [XXX] What do you think about Community Edition. Great Idea! Not so, because.. [44 characters or maybe few more to keep it short]. If the want to give more input they should go you can go to www..
Decidim allows to enrich spaces for participation through multiple available components (surveys, proposals, follow-up of results, comments and several more).
The ultimately decision should me made at the board. The community tools intended to gather input (and should communicated this way).
As Sophi said, "this is not about offering to vote (which can be disabled in Decidim) but about providing a support to a comment. It's very different because that allows people not fluent in English to give an educated opinion and partipate. It's easy when you're fluent to express yourself, and it takes hours to one who is not, most of the time he will abandon before."
Decidim allows to enrich spaces for participation through multiple available components (surveys, proposals, follow-up of results, comments and several more).
-> True; as - I think I said - no experience with all participation tools.. Did try decidim quickly today. I personally find https://try.decidim.org not utmost attractive visually (not judging the functionality, capability's or scale ability) . Another part is a full fetched participation environment really needed. Or is it rather overblown functionality nobody actually gonna use. The number of active commenting users isn't extremely large; and the number responding here even lower. Even polls at https://planet.documentfoundation.org/ attract representative amount of users. I happy already with kind of comment board showing depth (so responds too) and a moderation score (the moderation can be done by anyone logged in at the site). Gray means Off-topic / irrelevant; +3 Spotlight. In addition can a vote be added; to support/unsupported. And maybe a poll functionality Are more options actually needed? I'm would be quite happy with forum/ bulletin board with decent comment functionality and possibly to support a comment and/or prioritizing comments.
This e-mail message board is not my type of thing. Unstructured, hard to go through. Bug tracker message system is already a lot better. And a message board with comments (which easily show who is responding to what and being able to filter based on votes and or moderation score) is perfect already. The 'voting'/ supporting should be enough for non fluent people, I think. And message board maybe even be translated too by some automatic translation site. Quality is often quite acceptable. Visa versa people could use a translation side to write their opinion in native language, while being automatically translated to English with some 'heading: automatic translation" and the source text below. That's what I do if there is a posting of a bug in Spanish/French/German.
And it could environment could be used also on blog.documentfoundation.org. As I'm talking about message board with same functionality (except slightly improved comment system). So to backend or the whole site could shared. Without bloating everything with again a new environment for participation. Including maintaining (security updates/ configuration)/ moderating etc. And all the comments can also send as e-mail message to the e-mail archive if people like nabble/mailings.
Fair enough,
In my opinion, one cannot always depend on translation tools to say something. I usually use them, but many times it is necessary to make adjustments to bring the translated text closer to what you really want to say.
The case of translating text is different, since even if it is not the best result, the idea can be understood.
But that's just my opinion.
In addition, I believe that a full participatory environment is necessary. In principle, because it concentrates different tools on a single platform.
Regarding the mentions about updates and maintenance, I have already expressed my willingness to add my collaboration if necessary.
I also believe that when everyone can feel the benefits of such a platform many people will welcome it.
-> Regarding the mentions about updates and maintenance, I have already expressed my willingness to add my collaboration if necessary.
Missed that :-). For the record, I'm only the QA guy who landed in the mailing list here :-). I'm surely not having any sway in the topic. No worries. Only expressing my thought/impression. I'm bit skeptic if it would get enough traction where a full fledged participatory environment is effective/functional. I always assume that most of the users don't care about the organization or how the product is produced. They are only interest in the end product (a gratis Office Suite). It's bit like politics. Mostly not to interesting. Goes on in the background.. Until it hurts a group and 'the people' start to make their voice heard. There are currently policy implemented in the Netherlands which are in the making for maybe 10 years (probably even longer); only some complains in margins. Live goes on, until the start rolling out the policy (or attempt to do so). Hell breaks loose; how could they... all sorts of discontent.. they could have known.. they could have complained earlier on. But all kinds of excuses/ thoughts. Not interesting,; others will manage it; it are only plans, they will be never executed. It did take 10 years, so will take again 10 years, nothing to worry about.. And there is still strong 'argument' that plebiscite shouldn't have a say. Which pointed out here also. It's used for feedback; not for the decision making itself. Still belong to the board, because they know the best/ have 'inside information' (with a positive connotation). The public might want proper roads without paying taxes. However not something any politician realize (Yes, there are way's semantically? Don't call it taxes but contributions. Or create a communistic system with only a collective. Without private property taxes maybe not needed. However in essence still a burden for the public as they still pay the price.
There number of bug reporters aren't to high and there are only few regulars at QA/UX. Or the bug tracker is to hard to use (read some complains here and there). And it's English only which might be entry barrier.
-> I also believe that when everyone can feel the benefits of such a platform many people will welcome it.
It might attract more people; really don't know. I'm no expert on the LibreOffice community or language sub community's. However I have never seen many. I'm seeing only a small group of (very) active people; some passing by once in a while and those who do a single bug report of write a single comment.
I let it up to others to evaluate & decide