How does Loomio compare to Discourse?
First impressions are not brilliant - what do you get in exchange for giving up unlimited categories and subcategories, proper security, rich text editing, wiki posts, etc.?

I'm told it somehow extracts concensus opinions from the messages, but I haven't found that bit yet.

Is it OK for 10,000 users?

Hi, my name is Jade and I am a member of XR San Francisco Bay Area in the US. We are using a keybase and email for everything right now and it’s driving people batty. We are evaluating Loomio to help our SOS process, and looking at setting up a regional Discourse server for more general chapter communications.
It’s been a bit of time since the last post on this thread: how are people feeling about Loomio? It seems that the use of Discourse is pretty established with the global base and regional chapters... but it seems like Loomio’s explicit democratic features are really nice for a specific kind of conversation. I’m tempted to try to get folks to use both, but only use Loomio specifically for important decisions that warrant the voting structure.

Exactly. Loomio is the only platform designed for deliberation and decision making.

Hi Jade!

I like Loomio very much. I also love the people behind it, their vision and philosophy.

I would agree with Martin that it's a profoundly superior tool for decentralized decision making, and harnessing collective intelligence. Discourse is great but it's basically just one of a thousand generic messaging platforms.

For me, the design of a virtual space like this is the equivalent of a facilitator; they steward the way in which people come together, listen, share and co-create. Facilitation / design can be terrible, and waste people's potential, or it can be transformative, bonding and generative.

Since I first got involved in XR I almost immediately recognised how much Loomio could help - after all, it was created by a group of people very intimately involved in and passionate about the Occupy movement; recognising that one of the greatest challenges was coherent, efficient and inclusive conversations that resulted in transparent and collaborative decisions.

You have groups and subgroups in Loomio. Also you have threads (like Slack) add you can see I'm replying to you in a thread right now, rather than just chronologically at the bottom like a linear chat such as WhatsApp. Threads make it easier to skim conversations and choose when/if you want to dive into tangents/segways/particular details.

You can also move these threads out into a while new separate conversation if you find a tangent becomes worthy of a whole discussion topic of its own.

Most exciting is the polls - a range of tools for getting advice or reaching consent or even finding a date everyone can do (like Doodle polls, without having to leave Loomio). The consent decision making poll is time limited which gives it gravity, it's very visual and tactile for clarity, you see people's actual reasons for their vote, and when a decision closes, the person who started it is promoted to share the outcome / impact of the decision.

Polls are neatly stored in their own section and it's easy to quickly catch up if you've been away and see instantly what actual decisions have been made that might affect you, and which are still open now for vote casting.

My only big missing thing I think now is a mobile app. Having this would allow Push notifications (smartphone notifications when a message is written or someone tags you.)

I'm looking to use Loomio to invite 'Voice of the UK movement' feedback and suggestions on our XR UK overarching national strategy.

Luke, thanks for the detailed reply.
One question I’m facing is whether to try and encourage my chapter to use Loomio, Discourse, or both.
We currently chat via Keybase teams, share docs on CryptPad, and send a lot of tedious email chains.

I feel like we have a few needs to fill.

1. Better subgroup communication. Say we have folks form a small group around planning for an action. Keybase + email is isn’t working great. The former is too rapid-fire, and the latter gets bogged down with large groups doing reply-all dances. A more persistent threaded conversation like Loomio or Discourse seems like it can fill a role that a traditional listserv (or google group) would serve in this situation — but with more flexibility, searchability etc.. And forget about Google Groups — nobody here wants to touch that.

2. Reaching agreement on proposals that require wide buy-in and discussion. Chapter-wide decisions. Loomio seems like it excels at this. It’s what it was designed for, as you point out.

3. Having a sort of open commons space for people within the group to discuss, plan, congregate etc. Group calendaring. Informal polls. Discourse seems pretty good here. Loomio might work too. F Facebook for this.

So that’s kind of what I’m trying to flesh out. I’m still curious to hear if you all are finding in practice that you are getting good adoption from folks in your groups around Loomio?

I feel like the important, need-serious-votes decisions work best in Loomio, and the more open community knowledge base Q/A / calendar stuff works well in Discourse. Am I nuts for wanting to maybe try both in parallel for our folks?

Sorry if I’m being obtuse / belaboring the point. Thx!!

Hi there -- Symbiosis is working on communications and decision-making platforms and we're looking for more info on Decidim vs. Loomio -- pro's and con's of each. The limit of 1000 people on Loomio has been raised as a concern (a confusing concern to me as I don't know how 1000 people make a decision together except through delegation/confederation). If you have experience or perspective on Decidim I'd be particularly interested in hearing it since I know Loomio has a lot of fans here (but reflection on limitations would be great). https://decidim.org/ Thanks

decidim seems much more directly focused on gov't-style democracy with committees, proposals, mass votes etc. loomio seems designed for cooperative organizations with < about 300 people involved. loomio is simpler -- just focused on decision threads with good ad-hoc voting stuff. we are using it to make decisions in a volunteer organization and it's really nice for that. ie it's good for a do-ocracy, especially if you pair it with a group task management tool like trello.

@Luke Flegg I don't see 'Extinction Rebellion GLOBAL', it does not show up in search. How can I look at it? Thanks

Hi Paul!
I'm happy to help XR Farmers to get on Loomio. My friends at Loomio have given me a subscription group for XR use. I can create subgroups.

Group structures in Loomio unfortunately currently only have 2 levels (group and subgroup)
So I can create an XR Farmers group, inside which we can create subgroups such as XR Farmers global, XR Farmers UK, XR Farmers Cornwall - even though these obviously nest inside each other geographically, they wouldn't inside Loomio.

Let me know if you want me to create that XR Farmers group.
This 'parent' group could be useful for discussions and decisions affecting all Farmer Rebels across the world?

- Ah yes, there's currently no XR global, for this reason; it didn't feel right to nest it under XR UK

I could create a whole new group for XR global though?

Hi Luke, thanks for offering that. I will bring that up ay our next meeting.
I suppose the structure you suggest would be Ok, although its strange that they do not allow multiple nesting as is common on many forums.
The Loomio page layout is not exactly ideal - something much denser is required to see ideally several previous contributions when replying.
Something weird is happening to the right of the text: far too much space waster for the graphic and the blue floater is SO inaccurate, its frustrating.
I think Loomio needs some additional formatting options before it becomes suitable for anything other than a single thread conversation.
I am also surprised that individual members are not allowed to create their own groups and subgroups.
Even the voting system is far too simplistic. It should be possible to restrict voting to a specific group of people and also constrain it in time: declare a poll, have a discussion , arguments for and against, and only then accept votes.
I have not seen Mattermost yet which may have its own niggles, but Loomio IMHO is not there yet

Mattermost is just a chat platform

Hi, anyone can be made an admin at the blanket level, or for specific subgroups. Then they can create/edit subgroup structure.
Regarding timed proposals, that’s a built-in part of every proposal or poll in Loomio — there’s a deadline and notification mechanisms around it.
Discourse, a discussion / forum platform also in use by XR folks, does not allow for multiple nesting either and people have made do there for groups of several thousand in France and elsewhere. Just to share some research....

XR Farmers, a group I belong to, is currently looking at options for establishing a national and a network of local discussion/ action groups. Your proposal would seem to fit the bill!

@Luke Flegg - I like Loomio's platform and functionality but worry that with the move from Basecamp to Mattermost, Discourse, etc, we'd be risking duplication?

@Paul Sousek - please see message in Facebook - cheers.

David Williams from Llanidloes 😎

I'm also concerned about that. Ironically, it'd be a lot easier to make a decision about whether to switch from Basecamp, if Basecamp / MatterMost / any existing tool actually offering any kind of decision making tools for rebels en masse to make decisions in a deliberative way.
Thus we're in a catch 22. This is why I recommended the switch to Loomio 1 year ago.

However, there's 1 other way to create change (in addition to, not instead of cooperation with SOS and existing slightly dysfunctional decision making systems) and that's honoring the importance of rebellion, including on the inside of XR.

So, if we feel like we've exhausted more cooperative options, we can rebel by using the tool that actually works and helps us to work together more regerative and effective ways. If enough rebels feel the same way, those clinging onto the old way will have to join us.

I'm not saying we've run out of options quite yet though! but there may be stubborn laggards who are so triggered by technology that they will only switch if everyone else does. Which I feel sometimes involves a lack of empathy and collective responsibility, but I haven't reached that perspective quite yet!

I keep asking what Loomio has that Discourse hasn't, but I haven't had a reply. You want polls, Discourse has polls. Of various kinds. You want to be able to find all your polls on a subject - it has tags. Want to cope with 1,000 different groups all on the same platform but not flood people with messages, Discourse can do that. Although I'm used to Discourse, and you are used to Loomio, and we all like what we're used to. But a proper comparison of the two tools might help people to make the decision properly.

Hi Nikki,I thought I did reply months ago.
Perhaps we can have a video call and actually look at the different tools?
I don't Discourse extremely difficult to access.
I've asked all over XR how to sign up and none was able to help me. It seems to have major barriers to entry.

A proposal by Robin B from Operations was shared on Discourse to create a huge change in how my circle functions and only 2 members in my 8 person team was able to access it.

I can be available almost any time Monday onwards.

Hi @David Williams , check facebook

One critical difference between the two is Discourse uses bbCode-style markup in a non-graphical text entry box to make posts. Our chapter has a lot of folks who find this cryptic and a non-starter.

Loomio’s text entry is graphical rich text. It’s more accessible to a wider range of users because of this.

The ability to nest replies in Loomio seems preferred by the folks I’ve been evaluating these platforms with here in our area (XR San Francisco Bay Area)

If you replied with a detailed appraisal of the specific advantages Loomio has over Discourse, I didn't see it. Perhaps you could find it and post a link? I can't.

We have had a few issues with the tool I wrote to try to simplify the sign up process. To start with, Microsoft refused to allow us to send emails to any of their servers. It took over 3 months to get that sorted. As our invite process involved clicking a link in an email, early adopters with Microsoft addresses struggled. Over enthusiastic attempts to set stuff up by hand, so it didn't link with our sign up tool didn't help. We gave spent a lot of time streamlining and improving the process, and I hope it is a lot better now. Basically, the problems haven't been with Discourse itself, but with our attempts to integrate it with the other tools, and XR's way of working.

I would really like to see a Loomio instance being used by 10,000 users, in 1,000 or so separate groups who don't really want to be pestered with what's going on at the other end of the country. But which allows them to talk to others all over the country when they want to.

I'm open to the idea, but I can't see how it would work in real life. I'm also open to a video call, but not before Tuesday.

Great, let me know when's a good time and we can do a video call.
Maybe I could record it and trim the video down into a kinda XR relevant pitch for using Loomio.I do have 1 reservation with pitching an organisation wide switch, which is the lack of push notifications on mobile, but there may be a workaround, and I know a native app is coming.

Luke078 510 54 199
lukeflegg.co.uk ( http://www.lukeflegg.co.uk )

@coraroelofs I fundamental agree with your comment under your vote. Generally when the co-op I work for uses Loomio we go through a lot of deliberation before we are at the point of making a proposal. At work we have a investigative stage, then a working up proposals stage, then a decision making stage. At each stage we know who the constituents are and what their roles are. Pretty much all of what you mention in your google doc is possible whilst using Loomio. Even now once the proposal has been made it is still possible to go through rounds of clarifying questions, amendments to the proposal, rounds of checking for objections etc. It is also possible for other proposals to be made and other tools to be used. As this thread has been going on for months and months I thought it would be interesting to play with the tools. I have just extended the voting by 3 days. Maybe it would fun and informative to role play something either here or in another thread where we try stuff out. :slight_smile:

@suehagley Yes! It can be so confusing with the multitude of channels and platforms. I would much prefer if there were less. XR is migrating off basecamp so hopefully that will help. My view is that Loomio is a platform designed for deliberation and decision making and I believe that it can be a powerful tool.

@all (hmm. Any way of tagging everyone @Rob Guthrie ?) would it be helpful for me to do a live demo with those of you interested in Loomio? Sounds like you Paul are having a few tech issues / exeriencing bugs maybe (as I don't see what you see) and also some things like customisable permissions around who can create groups and stuff which I could maybe help with.

Currently you need to use the Notify feature on the context to message everyone in the group, but we'll add support for @mentioning group handles this year.

@Tony Franks re: your vote statement - FYI we support proposals without the Block (or even abstain) options now.

@Cora Roelofs that is a wonderful document, thanks for sharing! Just to clarify, proposals in Loomio are anything you want them to be. For instance, they can be a draft, just to get clarifications, or they can be a "binding" vote. It's up to the user.

@Ian Hugh Mana this platform can be public or private.

Loomio currently suits individual groups up to about 2000 people. Or goal this year is to scale effectively to 20K active participants. I don't believe Loomio is suitable for the entire XR movement at once, only for multiple small chapters of it.

However I think you need to organize in small chapters to have any chance of being successful and connecting as people.

@Ian Hugh Mana Ah, Ian, it appears that you may have misread the proposal. The proposal is not "XR UK starts imediatly using Loomio for movememt wide decision making", it was not even "XR UK working groups start using Loomio for decision making", it was only that the less than 100 XR people on Loomio at the moment actually try out some of the tools so that we can have a discussion based on practice. Also it is entirely possible to have Loomio groups that are not public.

@Paul Martin @Rob Guthrie , your product is great , looks good , has great features. But ultimately not scaleable enough for all UK at present without creating silos (a bit like this one ) . In future ....if there is one ....who knows? It remains on our radar as a possibility if it becomes scalable. For smaller , or defined , XR groups it could be either a good tool for deliberative decision making or an alternative for discussions. We do organize in small chapters, to connect as people but also need to be able to connect across all the small chapters. 20k is insufficient for this. Best wishes & no ill will.! Ian

Thanks! Yes I agree with you, not ready for all UK.

That's an incredible challenge, and I'm not sure it's the right one to try to solve right now.

Our approach is to support small groups to develop deliberative skills and strong relationships, and pay attention to how they scale up and inter communicate, then support them with that.

for that , you're looking good , for 3.5% of UK population it is indeed an incredible challenge 😳!

Hi @Ian Hugh Mana, in response to your comment that says "your product". For the avoidance of doubt, I do not work for Loomio or stand to gain in anyway from people using Loomio...Well I suppose I would gain from being in a movement that had increased digital democracy and participatory governance which could help with the further gains associated with reductions in the severity of the climate and ecological crisis. But I have absolutely no financial interest or stake in Loomio. Paul xx

@Ian Hugh Mana @Rob Guthrie I am wondering about the population of XR UK working groups...are there any working groups with over 2,000 people?

No, working groups are relatively small. But persuading people to use a different channel (Loomio) for internal working group decisions than the one they use for everything else is not going to be easy.