Abstention - Do Loomio voting options foster participation ?
Fabio Balli
Public
Seen by 280
Today, a proposition may be read by 50 people, but only 20 vote. What if the other 30 were made visible ? Would that not increase the sense of belonging in the community, acknowledging the commitment of both the proposer and the readers of the proposal ?
The "orange light" resulting of "abstain" is not representative of very different voting intentions (undecided, not caring, blank cheque, no legitimacy, etc.). Comments, while helpful, do not impact the interpretation of the charts.
To solve this, I propose to 1) change the orange icon title to "undecided", and 2) create a white icon "abstain".
Chris Zumbrunn
Fri 6 Nov 2015 8:36AM
Hitting a URL does not mean someone actually read the content on that page. Even commenting in the discussion does in my opinion not constitute abstaining.
Neofytos Kolokotronis
Fri 6 Nov 2015 1:03PM
I think the pie should only include people that engaged with the voting.
Alternatively, there could be sub-options for the those voting 'abstain' to explain their reasoning. Possible scenarios would be 'don't care, undecided, no time to follow, etc.
Raphaël Jadot
Fri 6 Nov 2015 1:52PM
Maybe not necessarily on the chart itself but I find the idea of having an amount of lurking users awesome.
Benjamin Knight
Fri 6 Nov 2015 4:46PM
I love the idea of displaying engagement stats, but don't think it should be presented in the pie graph.
Jochen Walter
Fri 6 Nov 2015 7:40PM
Perhaps the "viewers" should be shown as "not decided yet" or "still not decided".
Jochen Walter
Fri 6 Nov 2015 7:52PM
Changed because there is enough information about the not decided. They have to accept that democracy means to be part of a decision. And the group have to improve the contact to those for that they take part.
Greg Cassel Sun 1 Nov 2015 8:00PM
I think that online communities can benefit from peer feedback/ sociometric tools which are much more finely granulated and nuanced than stuff such as "like", "upvote/downvote" and "agree/abstain/disagree/block"; however, I think that a four point system is quite strong for formal decision process.
Fabio Balli Sun 1 Nov 2015 9:03PM
Thanks for these first feedbacks. :)
@raphaeljadot @gregorycassel For me, it is not so much about having more people take part to the discussion but about making the one who invest time in reading the topic visible (immaterial contribution).
Let's say we propose a topic. It has a totally different signification if we see 10 votes and have no clue about the others, or if we see them, but also know that 30 people have taken the time to read the proposal. Maybe that could be a "people who read" automatic number @matthewbartlett ?
@jameskiesel maybe that is just about wording, not adding an element ? From what I understand, the orange "abstain" is in fact "neither agree, nor disagree", and the "undecided" - which I saw is already used for non voters -, is "non voters".
Matthew Bartlett Mon 2 Nov 2015 6:32PM
Ah — I hadn't understood that. I love the idea of making lurking more visible.
Matthew Bartlett · Sun 1 Nov 2015 7:39PM
@fabioballi — I really support your wish to 'increase the sense of belonging in the community'. However it's hard for me to see how changing the voting options or colours will help that. Maybe there are other ways we could achieve that?