Using a 'Block'

I love the idea of giving groups the option of setting up their own decision-making protocol, both by making the decision-button labels customizable, and by providing a specific space on the Groups page for groups to describe their agreed decision-making processes.

We've already seen a need for this in cases where Councils use Loomio as a public consultation tool - the group members in a case like that are not so much a defined decision-making body as participants in a collaborative discussion where people use Loomio to generate shared understanding and build on each others' ideas rather than making concrete decisions.

I'd be extremely reluctant to go down the track of automating 'blocks' (i.e. disabling voting etc), or anything else that would lock us in to one mode of decision-making.

In my mind, Loomio should strive to be as neutral a space as possible, so diverse groups are free to implement whatever decision-making protocol they want. This is all about lowering the cost of more participatory decision-making so that it becomes an easier option, not pushing people into consensus processes that may or may not be appropriate for them.

PS thanks heaps for sharing that @tomlord!

For anyone that hasn't checked it out already, Tom's amazingly awesome group Aptivate have been working on a really interesting open-source tool called e-Consensus.

Heaps of great process ideas for inspiration!

Stoked to have your expertise in here Tom :)

Thanks @benjaminknightloom :-) I haven't yet looked at Loomio's cool-looking markup text, and I left the links to my world stuff on my post on the introduction page, so thanks for giving me a context :-) And thanks @richarddbartlett for your context - I'm sure there must be loads of previous discussions like this that have gone on that I'm missing, so if I'm saying stuff you already heard then prod me :-) In general is this the place to raise feature suggestions or bugs, or do you use mainly github, or a combo, or something else?

@benjaminknightloom - totally agree about the flexibility and for groups to use things how they want, it's something we've been keen on over here. We have no idea how people will really use our stuff :-) And yes, pieces of a tool like this such as the discussion board in itself can be useful. I'm just about to start an instance of Econsensus for my housing coop of 85 people, where we don't want a discussion board (too many flame wars!) and we DO want to record policy changes that we've made over the years, so we'll be focusing on the decisions, not the discussions. We're agonising a bit over the difficulty of modularising all this stuff so that we can hive off useful pieces like this for re-use, and don't try to create "the one black box system that can do everything", even though we've probably drifted along that route a bit.

On a provocative note, seeing as it's Friday :-) Given that idea of flexibility, I'm curious about the behaviour of Loomio's deadline functionality. It seems that you have to enter a deadline for every proposal, and once it has passed, there is no way to bring a decision back to life. How does that work for your groups? The obvious edge cases I can see are... Do you ever get people who want to have an open ended discussion about something with no fixed deadline? Do conversations finish halfway through sometimes? How do people review decisions they've made - I guess you could create a new one that has precedence, although it might become unclear which decisions are "made" and which are "old" or "we didn't consent to anything here"... Or am I missing some technical tricks? Keen to understand how people use this model.

We are probably flexible to a fault here, in that anyone at any time can say "hang on, that decision is now un-made and it back in the proposal stage again!" This means that it's easy for us to review things in a month and record any changes to previous decisions, if we want to try something out that we're a bit nervous about. And we're far less savvy about deadlines, we display them as a table that can be sorted on, but we don't even send email reminders for them yet. One day...

Have a good weekend!

Does using a block force people to enter a position explaining why they are blocking?

If not, I think it should.

As @strypey has alluded to, the usual understanding in consensus groups is that a block should only be used if "core values are at risk".

Or, as described in the Seed for Change guide to Consensus: "A major objection isn't an 'I don’t really like it' or 'I liked the other idea better'. It is an 'I cannot live with this proposal if it passes, and here is why...!'

Similarly the Open Organization Guide to Consensus Decision making states that "It is acceptable to block a proposal only if you think that it violates the fundamental principles or purposes of being in the group, or if you think it endangers the very existence of the group. "

Sociocracy and Holacracy also take interesting/ potentially useful approaches when it comes to objections/ blocks.

In sociocracy they have to be "argued and paramount objections" which is essentially someone saying "some aspect of me is in danger of going out of safe limits or will be unable to perform as required is this proposal is implemented".

In Holacracy they have specific narrow rules about what counts as a valid objection e.g. will this harm us or move us backwards (not just fail to move us forward), would this objection still exist even if this proposal didn't go ahead? is the proposal safe enough to try?

The similarity between all of the is that you can't just block without good reason, so I think people should be forced to give a reason when blocking, ideally with some explanatory text, e.g. please explain how this propsal will harm/ damage/ is dangerous/ goes against core value/ violates fundamental purpose and principles etc.

Yes I have heard a couple of ideas that would be great treatments for the 'block' card. One is it requires a proposal on how to resolve the block, so you can't block unless you are prepared to put energy into resolution. This stops people taking a blocking role but not involving themselves in constructive resolution. The second is this idea the @josefdaviescoates has raised about having. To enter an explanation. Right now you have the option of explaining and as little as Block in used in Loomio, I have never seen it used without an explanation. I have also seen other people inquire further into the reason for the Block, and in some situations people challenging it didn't feel like a good enough reason to Block. This has given me a really high trust in the overall group and how it responds to Blocks. I think we could make a explanation linked to Blocking, but I am also totally comfortable that discussion are not being damaged and in some instances are being improved by the whole group taking responsibility, seeking clarification or issue ing challenge. Ya for group wisdom. I love it.

The problem as I see it is in the interaction of two aspects of the current UI, each of which was set that way good reasons:

• one proposal per discussion at a time
• uneditable proposal texts

Let's say someone has blocked a proposal, and offered a counter-proposal (as a comment) which is not just an amendment, but incompatible with the current text. In the current UI, the proposal text cannot be edited to make this amendment, even if there is support for it in the comments. If the proposer digs their heels in and refuses to close their proposal early (or even extends it), the group has to talk them around before someone can advance another proposal (or start another discussion or some other work around).

Now this problem may already be solved by the plans the coding group have for the next major roll-out. If would be good for those of us not working from Loomio HQ to have a place we can keep in the loop on feature decisions which have been made by the code team (on Loomio.org somewhere?).

It seems to me that, as it stands, the software allows someone to block progress by refusing to let their failed proposal close, as I did recently on the 'Editing Comments' thread (to my shame). In hindsight, I would rather that @neilmorris pushing the block button had closed my proposal, because I think knowing that would discourage him from saying 'block' if he really just mean 'no'. Then, if he did 'block', I would have found it easier to accept that he was serious about it, and we could have immediately shifted the discussion onto what the conflicting issues were/ are, and what amendments might pass consensus in a future proposal.

It's funny revisiting this thread after talking to @richarddbartlett and @benjaminknightloom about a Pause button, and seeing that this was the behaviour @aaronthornton suggested for the Block. I think if it's worth having a 'block' button (and it may not be), it's worth giving it a distinct effect. I'll admit though, that the problem I'm addressing ('state proposals'?) could also be fixed by other suggestions being discussed in other threads:

• allowing editing of proposals on-the-fly
• allowing multiple proposals on the same discussion
• a draft proposal feature

i saw today a person in my group use veto instead of no, and worry little because i don't know exact what effect can have to proposals.

Is it just simple strong no, or it has any effect like the proposal can't close?

At the moment, what effect a 'block' has on the decision depends on what rules you set as a group. As noted in previous comments, in consensus-based groups, a 'block' is usually a pretty clear sign that either:
* something is very wrong with the proposal
* someone is in the wrong group
* someone in the group is feeling disempowered and is using the 'block' as a defensive tool