Loomio – Crowdfunding a better way to make decisions together

http://loomio.org/crowd

by loomio • 12 years ago

75 42 12 years ago

loomio.org

chatman2• 12 years ago

Nothing more than a fancy discussion forum.

jonlemmon2• 12 years ago

Well, it's not really fancy. In terms of discussion forums, Discourse is much more fancy than what we've built.

But, unlike most forums, we've tailored every feature toward bringing discussions to consensus. And when you're trying to decide something online, that makes a big difference.

xerophtye3• 12 years ago

And from the looks of it, you did a great job!! Exploring your "how to make a decision on loomio" right now.

thangalin2• 12 years ago

Here is a different approach (a mash-up of StackExchange, reddit, Wikipedia, and hallojs):

* http://davidjarvis.ca/world-politics/

* https://bitbucket.org/djarvis/world-politics/

See also:

* http://hallojs.org/

whimful5• 12 years ago

it's an interesting approach. I would be interested to see whether world-politics is capable of generating and addressing a range of diverse perspectives.

in my experience, without a focus on dialogue this isn't easy.

thangalin2• 12 years ago

A good point. A friend of mine pointed me to six hats[1]. Currently the mock-up mirrors a two-level reddit in its dialogue with a tight focus on facts (the information-based white hats).

The advantage of having only facts is that the interface is simpler. The disadvantage is that not all views might be represented, thus impeding dialogue.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Thinking_Hats

Widdershin• 12 years ago

I know some of the people involved in this project, and I've recently started trying to contribute. It's really cool to see New Zealand open source software doing well in the wider community.

I've also used it personally for a few things and I think the idea has really good potential. It ties open decision making into a discussion quite well. Try it out.

https://github.com/loomio/loomio

jessedoud2• 12 years ago

Thanks! We were stoked to get your pull request today :)

derekrazo• 12 years ago

Speaking from experience, Loomio is a wonderfully effective decision making platform. :)

killerpopiller• 12 years ago

how does it ensure that only one person gets one account?

simontegg• 12 years ago

it doesn't. The use-case is high trust groups not mass voting.

jessedoud2• 12 years ago

We're interested in exploring cryptographic anonymization. But the truth is, most groups don't need it.

whimful5• 12 years ago

groups can set their own threshold for entry. one option is manual approval where the applicants email is visible to coordinators and the applicant supplies an introduction. simple but quite effective

xerophtye3• 12 years ago

I really like the platform. It enables people to conduct the decision making in a way that is followed in formal committees, and even the UN. People present options, everyone talks about them, then when it seems that the group is converging towards a solution, you present a proposal. And then everyone votes on it (and not just a yes or no!). So it's pretty cool.

I just have one concern, does only the leader present proposals? or can everyone do it? To me, letting only the leader (OP) do that makes sense. otherwise wouldn't everyone be just doing that instead of posting suggestions?

robguthrie2• 12 years ago

Thanks! Yes anyone can start a discussion and a proposal, but we haven't experienced people just starting proposals without engaging in other ways. People start proposals but if you don't want to participate, you can just let them die. The big idea here is to build shared understanding through discussion before a proposal is suggested, that way the group has a solid foundation on which to create a decision.

xerophtye3• 12 years ago

I understand the intended usage but I am just a little surprised that people actually follow that. Either way, good work! I am loving it!

mrmondo2• 12 years ago

Great project, have my $12.

FYI - the website takes a very long time to load in Australia, I would suggest using a CDN to improve international load times.

loomio7• 12 years ago

Thank you so much! Your support means a lot :)

We've tried to optimise load times but we will try to improve them further.

whimful5• 12 years ago

good to know, we're on cloudflare, and do have caching in place. were there any pages in particular that were slow?

mrmondo2• 12 years ago

Sorry only just saw this, it was the front / landing page. It seemed to be very sluggish, especially if you are already using cloudflare, unfortunately Australia's internet is atrociously slow compared to NZ's (oh how I miss it!) so it's very noticeable if a page is even slower than usual. Perhaps make a free NewRelic account and have a look to see what you can easily target as low hanging fruit (long db queries etc...)

MakeUsersWant• 12 years ago

My pet peeve is projects that don't describe what they do. Thought process while reading:

Loomio is a user-friendly tool for collaborative decision-making:

Piqued my interest.

not majority-rules polling, but actually coming up with solutions that work for everyone.

Skeptical because it promises to get rid of office politics. I want to know specifics how and why it works. Cold, hard, game-theory and/or economics. Maybe there is something useful behind that marketing-speak.

We’re a small team in New Zealand, and we’ve built a prototype that people are already doing great things with.

Total non-sequitur. I don't care who you are. Convince me why the product works before I invest more effort.

Now we’re crowdfunding so we can build the real thing: a new tool for truly inclusive decision-making.

Ah, it doesn't work yet.

Youtube video

Sorry, I'm not going to spend an hour of my time when you've already proved yourself a bad steward of the last five minutes.

Contrast this to xerophtye's comment: short, punchy explanation how Loomio works.

robguthrie2• 12 years ago

Thanks for the feedback. We'll try to fix those points.

Checkout the explore page for a few examples of groups using the tool:

https://www.loomio.org/explore

loomio7• 12 years ago

Thanks to everyone for checking out Loomio! If anyone has questions, please feel free to ask away (several of the team members have answered a few already).

audreyt• 12 years ago

I'd just like to thank the loomio team for supporting Taiwan's #CongressOccupied activities as chronicled in http://0sdc.tw/en — you played a key part in ensuring a safe and successful process, and will likely help on our future of constitutional reform as well.

loomio7• 12 years ago

We were humbled to be able to support you, and it's reaffirmed our belief in the importance of translations and accessibility in the app. All the best to you in Taiwan!

User87122• 12 years ago

Crowdfunding web applications? Is this becoming a new thing?

Send us 100k, and we'll finish our beta application, and give you rewards, like your name in the code, or for $500, you can have a coffee with us on video chat. Or for $25,000, fly yourself here, and we'll give you a tour of the city and cook you dinner. Does this not sound crazy to anyone else?

If they raise an extra $150k, they'll develop extras, such as a plug-in architecture to enable an ecosystem of open-source plug-ins for different discussion and decision-making protocols that will scale to much larger groups. I don't know what the hell that even means, but isn't it a little irresponsible to even consider such features when you haven't made an official release, and proven the concept has any long term traction?

If you can't tell, this entire thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. After 18 months of beta they're unable to launch, or make enough sales to organizations to fund their development, so they're asking the crowd for a 100k donation? I don't believe their software is as life changing as the video makes it out to be, and I don't think they have a viable business. I expect them to burn through the money, launch, and fade away.

whimful5• 12 years ago

appreciate your skepticism, thanks for sharing that.

for some context, Loomio is a bootstrapped startup that, though unlike many startups we're not selling equity nor selling advertising, because we believe these investments compromise neutrality. We're not doing this to get rich or to get someone else rich, we're doing this because we think it's something that can make a difference. And it already is

keep asking good questions

loomio7• 12 years ago

Hi, thanks for your comments. We launched a functional and useful alpha in early 2012, followed by a public beta in 2013, which was open to everyone to use. 15,000 people have already signed up and people are using the software right now all over the world. You're welcome to use the Loomio protoype right now, either the hosted version in the cloud, or install your own instance.

Set up a Loomio prototype group here: https://www.loomio.org/group_requests/new or grab the code from http://github.com/loomio/loomio

So if we're talking about the beta prototype, characterising us as "unable to launch" isn't fair. What the crowdfunding campaign is for is building Loomio 1.0, a redesign and expansion of the core idea we've validated.

The stretch goals would allow us to unlock matching funding from the New Zealand government, including taking on some big technical challenges. You are right that these are not yet well-defined, since we're still a ways off from starting to work on them. But there are serious challenges around scaling up meaningful online discussion and decision-making to large groups that I don't believe anyone has really solved yet. We want to take them on.

We've hung in there for 2 years already, and put together an amazing team. The incredible support of over 1000 people is now going to allow us to release Loomio 1.0 later this year. We're not going anywhere!!

So sorry it leaves a bad taste. If there's anything else you'd like to know that might help you understand it better, please let us know! We're a genuinely earnest and well-meaning group trying to build something we think can help people.

User87122• 12 years ago

Why would you say unable to launch isn't a fair assessment? If you had a functional and useful alpha over 2 years ago, and 1.0 isn't released, I'd say that's spot on. You're going to be in for nearly 3 years, $100k from the crowd, and an unknown amount from your supporters and team before officially launching. 15,000 users on free software is a small number. I'd be worrying the small number isn't because the big launch has happened, but because the concept doesn't have enough appeal. I've launched a few different projects in the past that hit 15,000 users in a week, and the majority of those died within months or a year.

Nonetheless, congratulations on raising $100k from 1,000 users. That shows some dedication from the community, so you must be doing something right. Hopefully I'm wrong on my forecast, and good luck on the project.

chatman2• 12 years ago

Totally agree. Want to build a discussion forum? Give it a .io domain, put some text boxes and voting buttons and launch a crowdsourcing campaign. Not saying its not effective, but just something to ponder upon where crowdfunding is headed in general.

hypnotics• 12 years ago

Loomio is a great platform. A simple, yet elegant way to tap into the collective knowledge and decision making in organizations. Really recommend it!

I've already supported the crowdfunding and planning on contributing to the open source community as well. There is huge potential in Loomio!

loomio7• 12 years ago

Thanks so much! Right from the start, Loomio has been a community-driven project, and we only exist because of everyone's support.

smedvedev• 12 years ago

Great start guys! Wishing you all the best making that great product. I believe it can bring a lot of value to the World

loomio7• 12 years ago

Hey, thanks so much! We really appreciate the encouragement.

Theodores• 12 years ago

This concept reminds me of the non-hierarchical decision making by consensus process that groups such as 'Reclaim the Streets' tried to implement a couple of decades ago.

However, 'Reclaim the Streets' never asked anyone for any donations. That made them very different to your typical 'save the world' group where the main point of the org/charity is just that, soliciting donations.

Like many people here I don't quite get what the money is needed for, even though it is spelled out. I also had a look at the github and it looks like things are aeons away from the 'Wordpress 5 minute install'. The Wordpress 5 minute install really is too much technical wizardry for a lot of folk, they need an 'I.T. Expert' (TM) to do it for them. Wordpress offer hosted versions to get around this trifle and I am sure that is the way to go, however, if you are open sourcing the code and expecting people to host their own, being open source is not enough, it has to be reasonably easy to install.

Every man, dog and cat rolls a few Rails apps before their breakfast in The Valley, so it is no big deal. Yet for the people that are just about okay uploading something like Wordpress to their 'FTP server' and setting up a database through some hideous 'cPanel' contraption do matter. These are the people likely to be administrators of a group somewhere that could benefit from your software.

loomio7• 12 years ago

It is indeed inspired by consensus decision-making, although the Loomio platform can work for various decision-making protocols not just 100% consensus. It just nudges groups away from strict majority-rules or one-way communication (polls with pre-defined options), which leads to a lot more meaningful participation and better outcomes for groups.

A big focus for the next phase is making installing your own instance a lot easier. We're going to release a docker file for Loomio 1.0. But just in case you weren't clear, there is also a cloud-hosted version that anyone can use without technical expertise.

llamataboot2• 12 years ago

So excited to see Loomio on the frontpage of Hacker News! I've long dreamed of an effective web app for consensus decision making processes (and even thought about building one) but as a user of Loomio for over a year I can say they've done almost everything right -- even down to having some serious design chops. I'm so excited to see where they will be able to take this with the money they've raised (hit your goal today! woot!) and look forward to introducing more activist organizations, especially those with people in many geographical locations, to Loomio. Great job to all the devs and designers and alpha and beta testers!

For those of you who don't know, consensus decision making is not just a willy-nilly free for all. Over the years it has been refined by groups, it has developed strong points of process that help ensure it actually is a decision making process, not just a discussion that goes in circles or goes nowhere. (including the infamous hand signals that many saw during Occupy). If you are interested in consensus decision making, I highly recommend checking out this classic book.

http://consensus.net/pdf/consensus.pdf

While I don't think formal consensus decision making is the best tool for non-hierarchical decision making i all circumstances, I do think it is quite powerful /when used correctly/. Historically this has required strong facilitation skills and other roles (timekeeper, temperature checker, etc) -- all of which play their part in keeping the process working as designed.

Loomio has created a platform for decentralized non-hierarchical decision making that bakes in some crucial features /to accomplish formal consensus decision making/. All the activists I know that have tried it have been impressed by the dev team's responsiveness and dogfooding (Loomio uses Loomio), and have found the features enable formal consensus decision making in a way that a discussion board or voting polls or similar tools that aren't quite designed for consensus just don't.

grimtrigger• 12 years ago

What have you been using Loomio for? I still can't say I really get it.

llamataboot2• 12 years ago

For doing formal-ish consensus decisionmaking with groups that are geographically dispersed and can't do in-person consensus-based meetings.

Loomio – Crowdfunding a better way to make decisions together

Related Stories