How can we improve deliberation in Decidim?

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Decidim aspires to be a democratic project for the future and this requires a continuous improvement of its software. The current redesign process is a way to guarantee this improvement. By opening this debate¹, we want to contribute to this process by delving into one of its key facets or possibilities: the deliberative one. Currently, conversations in Decidim take place through comments, which are enabled by default in most spaces (or components) of the platform, as well as through the Debates space. We would like to know your opinion about how the deliberation in Decidim could be improved. In particular, we would like to know what new functionalities (i.e. operational elements of Decidim's design) could improve debate and dissent, as well as consensus and collective decision-making.

This debate complements the LAB on Decidim and Deliberation of the Friday 3 June in Barcelona. This LAB is framed in the context of the DELMA project, a line of work of the >D2< open space for transdisciplinary and participatory research on the multiple interrelationships between data and democracy, led by Tecnopolítica. As for the debate we open here, it is promoted by the Decidim redesign and product team, together with Tecnopolitica.

Soon we will share a new prototype with relevant advances of the redesign. Stay tuned!

¹This issue has been addressed in previous discussions.

The debate was closed on 12/07/2022 11:36 with these conclusions:

Good morning, Thank you very much for your contributions! Your contributions will be of great relevance when implementing changes aimed at fostering deliberation in Decidim, as part of the redesign process of the platform. For those of you who were not able to come, here is the video (only in spanish) of the LAB on Decidim and Deliberation held in the framework of the DELMA project on 3 June 2022 in Barcelona, which complements this debate.

Discussion Questions:

How can we improve feedback and engagement to encourage and facilitate deliberative conversations?
In your experience, how does the Debate component work? What positive or negative experiences have you had opening debates?
What use cases are useful to think about how to improve Debates? What other platforms can serve as an inspiring example?
What new features should the Debates component incorporate and why? How do we deal with the polarization that can occur in this type of space?
Can we imagine Decidim as a space to have a global conversation? What needs to improve to get to this stage?

We already have the video of the LAB Metadecidim session - Session 17. decidem.delibera: Deliberative Democracy in Decidim! Check it out right here if you couldn't come to the LAB.

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Nadia Nadesan 03/06/2022 10:28

These are my ideas on the topic:
Platforms alone cannot facilitate deliberation processes at best they are tools to support greater interaction, understanding, and accessibility.That being said any deliberative process is usually guided by people or organizations who broadly clarify goals, mediate conflicts, facilitate conversations, and synthesize outputs.

So one question would be what would it look like to moderate/facilitate a global discussion on decidim? What controls or admin responsibilities would be necessary to make easier for that person specifically? Would specific reporting mechanisms be helpful? Translations? Tools to help synthesize conversations? A better search function for looking for specific topics or key words?

Then as a participant how might it be easier to interact? Should this comment function be placed higher on the page? What information or design will help me contextualize and participate in the discussion with greater ease? For example voice to text tools, being able to upload pictures or media?

Maite López Sánchez 09/06/2022 09:00

Hi Nadia,
I agree platforms may be limited, but still, we have some platform examples that help structure deliberation by clearly differentiating pros and cons , see for example consider.it (https://consider.it/), kialo (https://www.kialo-edu.com/) or your priorities (https://www.yrpri.org/domain/3) .
I am truly convinced about their contribution to deliberative decision making, but at least I would say it is worth exploring if Decidim should/can include these functionalities.

Nadia Nadesan 09/06/2022 10:32 Edited

What I wanted to emphasize is the people power platforms both as participants and as designers, facilitators, and moderators. I was working on a design to moderate debates for young people on decidim and an important question was how to make the moderator's life easier. What controls should be obvious or handy?

But thank you for sharing these resources they are v. interesting 😄

Maite López Sánchez 13/06/2022 09:33

Sure Nadia, I just thought that one of the tasks of moderators is to help participants get a clear idea of how the debate is progressing (so they can better contribute to the deliberation) , and structuring the debate as pros/cons seems very handy to me. For example, if someone poses a comment against a topic and it is listed together with other cons, then, it will be easier for the participant to see if it adds new insights, and, in case it is redundant with previous cons and the participant does not realize, then the moderator can politely point that out.

Nadia Nadesan 16/06/2022 18:08

Yeah I have been think about this since you sent the resources, I really like consider.it because it puts things on a spectrum :)

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