Imposing paid plans on pre-existing Loomio.org groups
Danyl Strype
Public
Seen by 122
I recently noticed that some groups that were set up on Loomio.org when it was a pay-what-you-can operation have had their ability to create new threads removed, until they sign up for a paid plan. This is not cool. It's the way VC-funded startups behave, not social enterprises run as workers coops. I've raised the issue on the Loomio Community group, asking the Loomio team to restore the functionality of these legacy groups:
I'd appreciate your thoughts, in this thread, or there.
Oli SB Thu 12 Mar 2020 10:58AM
I just think groups are more effective when the "members" all contribute. Not sure exactly how that applies here... just thinking out loud really... it makes me wonder if more specific, dedicated groups with clear purposes, and definitions i.e. chat >> working >> trading groups could be more effective for encouraging collaboration at scale - which is, I think, what we would all like to see...
Daniel Harris Thu 12 Mar 2020 11:31AM
@Oli SB I am a member of 100s of groups... I think... I forget. And I wouldn't be surprised if you are too. 🙂 We cannot be 100% in all the groups at once. I don't understand what you are saying... Ah, you are "just thinking out loud really". Cool. I'll leave you to it and get on with another group that has thought their stuff through! 😂😂😂😂
Lynn Foster Thu 12 Mar 2020 7:05PM
I think there are lots of kinds of groups, and that is fine. Loomio is perhaps more targeted to groups that make more use of the decision making, are closer, more involved. But there's nothing wrong with large loose networks, and people who just want to basically keep up with what is going on, when they can. This is a very diverse group - and not much heavy group process goes on here, it is a place where people working on lots of different projects can stay connected with each other. The projects may or may not be related to each other, there is just a broad goal and opportunities to collaborate, or not.
Danyl Strype Mon 30 Mar 2020 2:57AM
@olisb
more specific, dedicated groups with clear purposes, and definitions
This is what I had in mind when I raised the possibility of getting subgroups creation powers back for this group. My intention was to have a group discussion about exactly what subgroups folks here would find useful. A discussion that might help to draw out people's reasons for being here. Sorry I haven't made time to do that yet.
Lynn Foster Mon 30 Mar 2020 12:47PM
We are connected to one group (very focused on one project, a forming co-op for producing and selling olive oil from Palestine, but very early days) where we were going to make a subgroup, but haven't done it yet. I'd like to use subgroups for that kind of thing, specific projects that most people can ignore, but also can kind of follow as general interest or maybe a few are interested enough to join.
Danyl Strype Thu 2 Apr 2020 3:44AM
Fair enough. What I had in mind was, as I said back in 2018 in the Housekeeping thread:
we try to identify some generic families of open app ecosystem, so folks can focus in on the discussions that are most relevant to the work they're doing, or the projects they want to get started. I think this is where we can drill down into the nuts and bolts of our implementations, our tech choices, and our successes and failure, and help each other avoid dead ends, or identify areas in which we can pool dev resources.
I'll give some examples in a new comment in that thread, to which it's more relevant.
Jon Richter Wed 11 Mar 2020 1:44AM
The export of this Loomio group is ~ 30 MiB, and can be used to replicate the whole community on a self-hosted instance.
If there is sufficient interest, I can try to set up one in Europe at Hetzner with https://github.com/loomio/loomio-deploy
Danyl Strype Thu 12 Mar 2020 9:49AM
Thanks for the offer Jon. One of the major downsides of moving OAE to self-hosted Loomio is that we'd all need an account on each server, and anyone who wanted to join OAE would have to set up a new account, even if they already had one on Loomio.org. This is one of the reasons I questioned the decision to cancel legacy pay-what-you-can plans, instead of pushing for these groups to move to self-hosting. As I mentioned on the thread about that, this wouldn't be a problem if Loomio instances federated with each other.
I note on this page a mention on JSON: https://help.loomio.org/en/user_manual/groups/data_export/#export-group-data-as-json
The ActivityPub federation standard is built around passing around chunks of JSON using ActivityStreams vocabulary. Since Loomio already speaks JSON, it may not be too much work to implement ActivitySteams and allow full federation between Loomio instances. Mastodon also uses Ruby-on-Rails, so it may be useful to borrow some components from them, or at least study their AP implementation.
Danyl Strype Thu 12 Mar 2020 9:35AM
Update: the Loomio Co-op have reconsidered their decision, and agreed to let the groups who signed up during the pay-what-you-can era continue to have gratis use of Loomio.org. Full functionality will be restored on those groups, and the message asking groups to "upgrade" to the paid plan will be replaced with some messaging that offers them some non-cash ways to contribute to Loomio. My faith in the Loomio crew is thoroughly restored.
Thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts, whether you agreed with me, or not. I respect and appreciate your honesty :)
Daniel Harris · Thu 12 Mar 2020 10:38AM
Hey @Oli SB am I being dumb? I can't figure out what you are implying? In "some way"? What way? What are you trying to aim for? Zero lurkers? Or a different way to measure membership? Anything else? Please elaborate. Cheers!