New Help documentation - we want your feedback!

I was hoping to have some useful feedback on the (generally awesome, epic) help page but I lacked capacity to focus on that. I understand the desire to translate ASAP, perhaps especially for the many Spanish speakers.

On a related note, @hannahsalmon , I guess the help page isn't entirely 'live' yet? I haven't seen a way to navigate to it, whether logged in or not. Are you guys planning to fully connect it and to translate it during the same frame of time?

I'm hoping that the Help page will become a prominent navigational option, either directly accessible on the index page or as a submenu option for "About", which is essentially an "About Us" page now (for some superb people). I've noticed that "About" isn't currently indexed for visitors, but it's linked prominently a fair ways down the middle of the page.

I just noticed that Gmail will often include a link to their help docs as part of the "flash message". I.e. "You just moved this discussion out of your inbox. Find out more."

I don't wanna make your life more complicated @hannahsalmon but @presley had a great comment in "how can we make it easy for people to keep up to date with Loomio progress" today. I think it would be awesome if possible to add something small but prominent to the "Help" page, to address how users can keep up with Loomio development and (if they choose) become actively contributing members of the community.

For instance, the Help page is currently structured as:

"How do I get started?
1.Start a group to collaborate with people on Loomio
2.Invite people into your group
3.Start a discussion on any topic
4.Make a proposal to see how everyone feels about a particular course of action
5.Decide together: "

To me right now, it would actually make lots of sense to add something like "6.Follow the Loomio story." and link that to some very simple, clear info on how to follow updates (twitter, Trello roadmap, blog) and to join this Loomio Community if desired.

I do realize that I'm saying this over two weeks after you first asked for feedback, and you probably want to or need to press forward. O:)

Hey feedback-providers, I've just updated the help docs to include Presley's suggestions, so please keep them coming :)

@gregorycassel, thanks very much for your input. You can access the Help page from inside the app by clicking on your user menu and selecting “Help”. But I’ve also just put a link in the footer, and we we are currently thinking about the best ways to expose it so that people can find it when they need it.

Hmm, I’m not sure about putting a 6th step into that initial quick start guide, but I think you’re right in that the help docs could be a good place to inform users of how they can keep up with Loomio development and/or become contributing members of the community.

Currently there are two questions in the FAQ section of the help docs that relate to engaging with Loomio development:

“What if I have a feature to suggest?” and “What’s coming up in the Loomio development pipeline?”

…but I’m aware that doesn’t cover everything that has been discussed in that thread, and is the FAQ too invisible? Maybe there should be a whole section called something like “Contributing to Loomio” or even just "The Loomio Community" which could include explanations of the various aspects to the community - open source contributions, the roadmap, this here group etc..?

I do think that a section called something like "Contributing to Loomio" or "The Loomio Community" would be helpful. Also, it seems like a lack of awareness of the trello roadmap (especially Ideas Backlog) comes up pretty often. The upvoting on trello cards would be more meaningful if more people engaged there. It would be helpful IMO to create more passive awareness of trello. :)

Related to Greg's idea, here are some questions I've had (some of which I still have) regarding participating in the community:

• should users start a proposals in the Loomio Community? (it seems like generally no, as when people do, they get like 10 votes and then think that because 8 people agreed, something should happen)
• should I vote or comment on the Trello cards (so few people do that I'm not sure if I'm being obnoxious when I do)
• should I revive really old discussions or start new ones?
• should I suggest a feature even though it's a bad time for new features?
• is the Ideas Backlog is meant to contain things that will be implemented when there's time, or just things that might be implemented and will be discussed further?

@presley are you suggesting those (excellent) questions as possible additions to the Help document, or are they things you're still wondering about yourself? I'd prefer for core team members to comment on some of them (instead of me)... however, some of them could actually be good new topics unto themselves.

Both :). I'm still wondering about most of them, which is my anecdotal evidence that there's something to be gained by covering them somewhere. A section on contributing in the Help page seems like a good place to me.

Good questions @presley - basically we've designed a system for an aspirational reality where we have a lot more development capacity to be building new features. So right now, lots of things get suggested and added to the backlog, but don't get actioned. I really hope that shifts soon and we can start implementing a lot of the great ideas. I do think it's really valuable to suggest features, engage with cards in the backlog, etc, because someday we will be able to do more development, and at that point we really want to build the most useful stuff for users!

Regarding "should I revive old discussion or start new ones" - I would say if the old discussion has relevant context, please revive the old one. If it's actually a different topic, start a new one and link back to the other one if it's relevant. This is a judgement call I'm happy for users to make themselves since there's no black and white answer. Often times past discussions have a lot of rich content that's good to include.

should users start a proposals in the Loomio Community? (it seems like generally no, as when people do, they get like 10 votes and then think that because 8 people agreed, something should happen)

If anyone feels that their independent proposal with maybe 1-3% community engagement means that something should happen, they are perfectly free to express that view and see how it goes from there. I don't think of that as a major problem.

However, perhaps it could be made somewhat clearer in How the Loomio Community Works (which is linked in Loomio Community's front page description) that Loomio Community decisions, and (most of) its subgroup decisions, are non-binding with respect to Loomio Cooperative.