Request for Input: Participation Permissions

I hope that we will be able to give names to groups, such that everyone in the group has the same voting rights

@alanna but doesn't that also grant them full group membership (that's how I read the next screen after clicking the invite people button)? I'm thinking only having access to that specific discussion.

Good question @ryangillespie - maybe @richarddbartlett could clarify?

@robertbeck - interesting! Can you tell me more about how it works in your group where only some people are allowed to block? Is that the only difference between those users and others?

@alanna yeah that is unclear at the moment. @ryangillespie has it right, currently the 'Invite people' feature on the discussion page adds people to the group. The aspiration is definitely to enable per-discussion membership though.

@alanna We have a group of siblings that share the ownership of a vacation property. The siblings would have the right to block a proposal.
Each of the siblings has adult children that occasionally use the property. They would have the right to vote on proposals.
Each family can block, but only with the consent of the parent owner.

Thanks! That's a really interesting use case @robertbeck

For me making proposals and voting on them is the same in all the groups I'm part of.

I would be happy with
- everyone can comment
- only this group can start a discussion, proposal or vote on a proposal

A slightly more flexible option of "and this group of people can start a discussion" would be an improvement that I wouldn't mind but could live without.

In our small group I made everyone coordinators. We had a lot of sub-groups created and it made things confusing.

I have since limited the number of coordinators, but wonder is it still possible for any member to make a sub-group?

** I would like to permissions to make sub-groups.

** Another wish would be the ability to make sub-groups of sub-groups (with restrictions on the ability to create them).

Great discussion! Awesome context you've given @alanna.

My take on participation permissions is:

Participation permissions

Who can start discussions?
- Members
- Admins only

Who can start proposals?
- Members
- Admins only

Who can vote on proposals?
- Members
- Admins only

Are there really any scenarios where you want people to be part of a group but unable to comment? Not sure this is a strong enough use-case to cater for.

Also, ideally you'd be able to specify certain "subgroups" as able to do the above actions (instead of just admins). However, I think for now just starting with "Admins only" and "Members" is a less-expensive but still super-useful way to go.

Thanks @jonlemmon that's a good clear description. I agree that in the future we'll probably want more categories of users, but for now different options for all members and coordinators is a good starting point.

@lbjoumcommonlyknow brought up the interesting idea of another option around the ability to create subgroups as well....

Thanks @jonlemmon and @alanna. I just want to chime in and say that this discussion should not be directed by imagined development costs.

This discussion should be high level and about ideals, to discover the use cases. That's all - Thanks for the great discussion so far. It's super to read.

@richarddbartlett and @robertguthrie are taking all this feedback on board and will be coming back with next steps soon. Thanks again to everyone who's contributed so far. We'll definitely be coming back to the community here for testing/feedback on this.

@jonlemmon that is so clear, it covers off anything I was trying to articulate:)

On the technical side I agree with @jonlemmon but would also have to agree with whoever it was up-thread who suggested that it's good to have group rules and procedures pick up the slack as much as possible and keep the technical side as simple as possible

In response to the feedback here, we've now added a tab to the group setup process called "permissions", which gives you options about participation in your group.

Coordinators can now determine whether group members can invite new members, create subgroups, start discussions, edit the context panel, edit their comments (even after activity has occurred), raise proposals, and vote on proposals.

We hope this offers a range of options to suit the various use cases you shared with us!

Thanks for your input @carlscrase @ianjames @praveenarimbrathod @chriszumbrunn @ryangillespie @robertbeck @joshuavial @lbjoum @jonlemmon @vivienmaidaborn @mathewdanaher

Awesome. Thanks loomio team.

This is a great first step. I'd still like to see at least one more user role in groups. In addition to the current roles of coordinator and member, something like a guest member. I want to be able to give a specific set of members certain permissions (like ability to start proposals & voting privileges) while allowing others to still participate in the discussion.

Yep @george2 I was thinking the same thing.

From an architecture perspective, we're thinking of implementing this with 'give that group these permissions in this other group' rather than creating another user role. Not certain of that though :)

Expanding on richards point: We're currently pondering if subgroups could identify people for roles, rather than expanding on the 'coordinator, members' selection.

That's great it's really nice to see such rapid response to our input!

Yes....love it. Thank you!

@richarddbartlett @robertguthrie I'm not sure about how difficult the architecture part of creating a third user role is, I'm mainly thinking in terms of the end user experience. I want to make it as easy as possible for my group members to interact with the software. While I might easily understand that a certain subgroup is for voting only and the main group is for larger discussions, it may be difficult for others to easily navigate that scenario. As a coordinator, I'd rather be able to set a user role if necessary. While for general membership voting, two roles is sufficient, for boards or smaller voting groups that would like guest input, 3 roles would be ideal. Something like Coordinator, Member, Guest. These three roles would also be beneficial if/when the invite to discussion (only) is added to the product.

I personally feel a big need for 3 levels of user permissions as well. That will be the next step when we iterate on this, I expect.

Thanks @ryangillespie, really appreciate your perspective. From an architecture perspective a group is a list of people, but you're absolutely right from a user perspective it is much more than that. Beginning to be convinced that 3 roles could go a long way. Eg now we have open groups that anyone can join, it would be nice if people joined as Guest and were promoted to Member after they'd demonstrated some good behaviour.

So I'm really curious about this. Do you think members would always just have one role in a group, or should they have possibly many roles?

@robertguthrie While I can envision situations where members would have many roles, most user roles roll up into each other. Like in wordpress, the admin can do pretty much everything, but there are more restrictive rolls underneath. My idea for three roles is trying to balance simplicity and inclusiveness for groups while still allowing some flexibility in the hierarchy of groups. IMO, there are two main pieces in the loomio world, discussion and voting. Since the coordinator role functions like an admin role, in my mind there is a need for roles that separate the discussion and voting roles.

In this context, I think that members only need one role assigned. Guest members would be allowed to participate in discussions (at least as much as the coordinators permit), Members (or Voting Members) would be allowed to participate in proposals and discussions, and of course coordinators have full rights to the group.

I think I'd rather see us creating a simple way for coordinators to create user lists and assign them permissions, rather than us trying to guess what the needs would be and pre-define and name them.

@philippeponge I am moving your other discussion here since it's the same topic....

I would like to accept peoples in a group without giving them the possibility to vote. For examples : - in a local area, the local people only vote, but they want to open the discutions to others - a person want to follow a group and so need to see what she had red or not… Then should it be possible to accept guests with specials rights.

@matthewmcnatt was also supporting this.

Thanks @alanna