Loomio
Wed 9 May 2018 3:17PM

Online Status

L Loren Public Seen by 122

Hello all,
The particular Loomio group I am apart of has a number of members that have been unresponsive and we have thought about removing them from the group. However, if you look at by their member avatar it shows last time they were "online" and at times it could be within the last couple of hours.

The issue we have is you might not have heard from that person in months though. Thus beg question how does Loomio determine whens the last time someone was active and what exactly does it mean? i.e. was 4 hours ago the last time they logged in? was it the last time they looked at a thread, is the last time they logged into the email account they use in order to access Loomio.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

MB

Midi Berry Wed 9 May 2018 4:28PM

Hi Loren.

Mostly, the team members in our various Loomio groups participate in dialogues, polls, votes etc. We do have one or two members who never comment or visibly participate. If we don't hear from a member for a significant period (which for us is probably months rather than weeks or days) we check in with them.

It's a good way to keep a connection with what is happening in our community field. I'm not in every subgroup of our Gene Keys Society these days, but as far as I know all team leaders keep this kind of contact alive and, whenever any of us have asked silent ones if they wish to remain, each has said yes.

We do let the decision to stay or leave sit with them, since individual freedom to define one's relationship with the whole lies deep within the ethos of our community. We also consider that silence is not necessarily and always a signal of non-actvitiy. It can be an active listening, intentional role and someone in that role might also choose to take and use the information, learning and any other benefits resulting from their Loomio presence in ways that benefit our community outside the loomio container.

This doesn't answer the question you raise about how Loomio defines 'active', but it seems to me that what is central is how we define what it means for a member to be active, and what contract we agree with our members in terms of any expectations concerning their presence and participation. I hope this perspective is useful as you reflect on answers for your own situation, which may be different than ours. love, midi :wave:

L

Loren Wed 9 May 2018 5:02PM

hello midi,

Thank you for the response. It is most appreciated. The information I provided before my question was to provide some context as to why the question was asked. I forgot to mention that our particular group meets in person at a minimum once a month. The individuals I refer to as not being "active" on Loomio also haven't been seen at any of the in-person meetings in the last six or so months nor have they responded to emails.

We are all about inclusion and people staying informed but not active.
However we also want to make sure we are being as efficient as possible in our workflow, which Loomio is one of the tools we use for our group's workflow management.

Again I appreciate your thoughts on the subject I brought up. If anyone else can answer my question it would be greatly appreciated!

RG

Robert Guthrie Thu 10 May 2018 5:32AM

Hi Loren. The value displayed is "last_seen_at" which is updated each full page refresh a user makes. So it's not super accurate (it does not get updated every click), but it should represent the last time they visited Loomio.

With the new invite to thread feature out, we could tell you if someone has seen a notification you have sent them. Is that something you think we should enable people to see?

I'm actually leaning towards removing "last_seen_at" from the user interface, as Loomio isn't intended to be a live chat.. but I think there is value in a facilitator knowing if a message has been received or not.

What do people think?

L

Loren Thu 10 May 2018 9:15PM

Hey Rob,

Thanks for the information. I would suggest it would be useful if that feature can accurately reflect if the user at least read a thread, thread reply, poll decisions etc...

At that point, I don't think a "last online" would be neccessary.

MB

Matthew Bartlett Thu 10 May 2018 5:45AM

I wonder if thread members would be better sorted by descending last seen this thread? Then you'd have a better sense of who you were talking to/who had a degree of shared context with you. Even if it didn't actually show when they were last online.

MB

Matthew Bartlett Thu 10 May 2018 10:23PM

"Last seen here"