Yep agree with not making it a back and forth thing with hiding discussions.

I think the use case 2 (in the context above) is important too. e.g. looks like this https://www.loomio.org/discussions/1236 has been done now, no? So shouldn't it now be closed/ archived? i.e. put in an 'archived discussions' area and locked so no new comments can be made. Perhaps with a note saying something like "want to re-open this discussion? start a new one".

On this topic, I've been thinking that every thread should have an 'outcome' field, that may or may not be connected to the existing proposal outcome feature.

@richarddbartlett discussion initiators could be prompted say a fortnight after the last comment to provide an outcome or archive

We've got archives in Econsensus. We're pretty randomly flexible, so we can just shove anything into the archives - this takes trust :-) We can rarely also move something back out of the archives into life, or in our case, between decisions and proposals if we feel that it's been made erroneously.

The archives are, as you'd expect, useful for us to hide dead topics, or proposals that didn't go anywhere.

Making search find archives by default (and allowing disabling) seems like a reasonable step - people may not know the state of something they are looking for.

We also talked about the related idea of making feedback on something "old" - e.g. we have a proposal, we decide to do some stuff, and we agree to review our decisions in 6 months. In some way, if we can see that previous discussions, comments, concerns etc. are "before this review" then we can maybe re-use the same screen and start a fresh review of the same decision. Maybe if everything on a discussion is "old" then it is the same as being in the archives, or if everything on a proposal is "old" then it didn't get made. We haven't got there on this one yet :-)

Thanks @tomlord, that reminds me, it would be really great on some decisions to have a feature that automatically prompts a review in X months.

I do not know whether this would work for other groups, but because I can't help but associate Features group with something like a bug tracking system (e.g. Jira or Bugzilla) I would suggest options like Close (No more edits and comments can be added), Reopen (Need to provide a good reason and possibly to be approved by admin), Clone (if we would decide not to let open, but just start a new discussion based on existing one), Link (I will start a new discussion about this as that would require a visible discussion ID).
Sorry, that it might seem not to be so related to the initial description, but I think Closing of discussion is definitely a needed feature and could possibly postpone delete and archive problem (as for me in those cases quite a big thought on who and which level are allowed to do so is needed).

We only agreed to implement delete in Indymedia codebases for use cases like neo-nazis open-publishing propaganda videos on Indy sites and leaching our bandwidth. Since we are only talking about storing text, not images sound or video, I don't think delete is required.

I agree with @paulsmith and @aijazvidrina that it would be helpful if co-ordinators could Close a discussion, and only they could Re-Open a closed one. I agree with @jonlemmon and @richarddbartlett that 'Closed Discussions' should be archived separately from 'Previous Decisions', as well as from active discussions.

I also agree with @richarddbartlett that it would be helpful is Balsamiq mock-ups were publicly viewable, rather than requiring log-in.

Now the search feature has been enabled (yay!) I think it is more important than ever that archiving be implemented; quite a lot of top results for a few of the searches I've tried have been really old discussions/ proposals that have basically been done/ implemented - they shouldn't be the top results!

Thanks for the new Search function, that was amazingly quick (Agile?) I would add to my comment below that there should be two kinds of archiving:

• Closed:

  • for discussions which have run their course
  • still visible to group members
  • stored in a searchable 'Closed Discussion' archive
  • excluded from searches of active discussions
  • can only be Re-Opened by a Co-ordinator

• Hidden

  • for discussion which are tests, duplicates, mistakes, or relics of misuse
  • visible only to Co-ordinators
  • Can moved to Closed, or Re-Opened by Co-ordinators

I notice in the ''feature release' thread that a 'delete discussion' feature was rolled out in Feb. Once an archive function is in place, I would suggest deprecating the 'delete' function for the reasons I gave below.

that would be very useful if we can somehow archive our discussions we don't need any more for discussion or decision making but we still need it as references or other ways of use.

Sorry to up this discussion, but it looks like it never came to a conclusion (there were surely other priorities one year ago). The "archiving" subject started here, it continued here, and it was launched again here, and not sure I found all of them but this one seems to be the most advanced one. If you know a more appropriate thread about this, please let me know.

Talking about 'archives', we should not miss what it is: something that does not appears in front, but that everyone can consult if needed.

Moreover, an 'archived discussion' should be a closed discussion, in which we can't comment again, unless it is opened again, or a new one is opened.

Till now, my trick is to create a group called "ARCHIVES", and I put in discussions I don't want users to be bothered with anymore. I made it private so that users don't effectively see them and can't effectively comment them again, but my wish is that users could still read them, in a specific 'archived' tab, or at the bottom of other discussions.

This last point makes me come to a conclusion: as you may develop a 'pin up this discussion' feature to put discussions at the top with a flag "sticky", you may develop nearly the same 'archive this discussion' feature that would put discussions at the bottom with a flag "archived" (and deactivate comments).

Thank you @Grégoire Barrault - I agree! This feature is in the roadmap: https://trello.com/c/nvuXmHPB

I hope we can build it soon.

@robertguthrie in our groups, rename the title of a discussion to prefix it with [closed] when it's over or when the decision is implemented or refused.
"pin to the bottom" seems more convenient than renaming the title of the discussions.

The only thing that bothers me a little is that it hapen from time to time that someone add a comment to an old discussion after it's closed. If it remains pinned to the bottom, people might miss it (for dummies discussions, it is the intention but if we use it as a flag to indicate the discussion is closed it might be annoying)

I should precise my idea: when you click the 'archive discussion' button, it should work nearly like the 'pin up' button, since the discussion get sticked to bottom instead of top, but moreover, the comments should be closed when using 'archive discussion'. And to keep being clear the button should be called 'archive', and not 'pin bottom'..

I think I find the features, as described, clearer than what is being suggested. A button to close a discussoin, and a way to see closed discussions seems more direct and clear than "pin to bottom"

Archiving has been in the backlog for a while... feel free to vote on it. https://trello.com/c/nvuXmHPB

I agree it's a good idea.

i'm in favor of functionality found in GitHub issues, namely being able to:
- close discussions
- label discussions with arbitrary tags
- filter discussions (from within the page listing discussions) for open/closed status and any labels

i think what's being proposed here is very specific to one use case, where a more general solution might be better for more use cases.

@ahdinosaur I agree... most of that is in the roadmap backlog. We've intentionally not made any implementation decisions because we need to sit down and design a cohesive feature set to meet these needs. Some of the functionality will come in with the 1.0 alpha interface, but probably not all of it.

Sorry for this false notification, I said I would set 2 months for voting, I may have miss-clicked; now it is corrected.

@Grégoire Barrault It would actually be better to set a much shorter closing date. Do we really need to keep this open for two months? This project moves so fast who knows what the focus will be two months from now. I would suggest only a week at maximum.

@alanna you are right. Development evolves faster than that and 2 months is probably too much.

For the previous proposition I set one week, but it seems members hadn't time to check their Loomio's activity, at least. This time I set more to see if more people would vote. There are twice more voters till now, but it may be the result of a more tangible proposition. Or people really like this feature so they have a motivation to connect and vote, whereas sometimes they don't feel affected by what is proposed.

Also, as archive feature is a 'later' improvement on trello, we are not in a hurry, so I set 15 days from now instead of 2 months, and let's see what happen...

@ahdinosaur , yes it's specific to one use, but all groups end up needing it as the number of discussions inevitably grows. This feature remains compatible with close, label, and filter ones. For example, the archive function would use the label 'archived', or the close function if it exists.

I assume that what is proposed here is a bit heavier than just filter, since the concept of archiving takes a crucial part in the group management process itself. Having specific buttons and access would help to formalize this step in the process, and newcomers would understand instantly what is passed and what is present.

A question, has there been any discussion about 'saving' Loomio group discussions when Loomio is being used by public sector types who need to comply with public records requirements, etc.?

@simon1 yes there has been discussion about the need for archiving. I think it will go along with a feature to save as a printable PDF format as well.

Thanks for responding to my question, @alanna. It's good to know that archiving for recordkeeping purposes is on the agenda.

Will search results look for content in achieved discussions ?

@Grégoire Barrault thanks for hosting this proposal and creating that nice outcome! This feature will definitely make it into the roadmap at some point. Right now, we're focused on finishing the transition to Loomio 1.0, but early next year we'll have a chance to look at new functionality users want.