Propose new functionalities for Decidim software
#DecidimRoadmap Designing Decidim together
Is your feature request related to a problem? A clear and concise description of what the problem is.
The collaborative drafts feature is currently underused, as it has several usability issues. To begin with, there are 2 different wizards, one for creating a collaborative draft and one for (individual) proposals. This also presents maintainability problems at the code level (the draft wizard is totally outdated).
The purpose of collaborative drafts is to co-create proposals, but there is no reason why they should be separate from the rest of the proposals.
Describe the solution you'd like
As a participant, I want to be able to...
- [ ] ... have a single proposal creation wizard, with a checkbox at the last step where I can flag whether I leave the proposal open for collaboration.
- [ ] ... navigate both individual and collaborative proposals through the same index.
- [ ] ... filter by the proposals that are open to collaboration.
- [ ] ... request access to participate in a collaborative proposal.
- [ ] ... get a notification/mail saying wether my access request has been accepted and/or rejected.
- [ ] ... view all changes that have been made to a colaborative proposal through version control.
- [ ] ... view a homogeneous interface for the common elements of individual and collaborative proposals.
As an author of a collaborative proposal, I want to...
- [ ] ... get a notification/mail when another participant requests access to the proposal
- [ ] ... be the only one who can accept and/or reject new contributors to the proposal
- [ ] ... be the only one who can withdraw the proposal
Describe alternatives you've considered
Keep the two workflows separate, updating the outdated wizard.
Mockups
1) New wizard
https://i.imgur.com/oncsOHM.png
2) Index of proposals
https://i.imgur.com/kAA8R4p.png
3) View as the author of an individual proposal
https://i.imgur.com/H74ZIiH.png
4) View as the author of a collaborative proposal
https://i.imgur.com/tGYIZfp.png
5) View as the contributor of a collaborative proposal (request access)
https://i.imgur.com/KAFBGCw.png
Does this issue could impact on users private data?
No
Additional context
Note: as one of the people who originally participated in the design of this feature, the hypothesis was to have a space for co-creation of proposals, without time limitations to edit them and facilitate collaboration among participants. This actually presents time synchronization problems with the "individual" proposals (while individual proposals cannot usually be edited after 5', collaborative proposals have no time limit).
After 3 years probably it makes more sense to hypothesize that during the proposal creation phase there should be no time limit for editing proposals, whether they are individual or collaborative. This could be solved by modifying the current setting, and simply allow the editing or not of proposals in a phase.
This raises some issues, for example, should the collection of endorsements and/or supports be allowed while proposals are open for editing? In my opinion clearly not. But limiting this by code is very tricky because of legacy. Instead, a warning should be displayed explaining the risk of simultaneously editing proposals and collecting support/endorsements.
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9 comments
Conversation with Oliver Azevedo Barnes
That’s a tricky question, for sure. Maybe if endorsers are notified of each change, they’ll have the opportunity to change their minds through the process? It might become noisy, so perhaps it could notifications of batches of changes for a day, for example.
(Just a raw idea, haven’t thought it through.)
In our experience, this hasn't been problem. It is common that in discussion platforms people can vote comments which can be later edited.
The trust issue seems to be very specific to certain areas. E.g. in the Nordic countries it's really not an issue but I understand in some places of the world it can be an issue.
Conversation with Oliver Azevedo Barnes
There’s also the question if trolls. Would requiring collaborators to endorse a proposal from the beginning ensure the collaboration is productive? Raising the cost for a troll to disrupt the drafting process.
Yep, here is the question of trust. We have always thought that this feature is primarily intended for collaboration in trusted environments (it is assumed that trust exists between the collaborators). And here is the difference with amendments, where no trust is assumed.
And another question that is not resolved with the current collaborative drafts either. What happens if at the end of the collaborative phase, for whatever reason, I no longer want to appear as a co-author?
As an author I might like removing my name if I no longer like where it's going. There might be ramifications of this I'm not aware, though. And I think the removal should only happen before the proposal is gone through its life-cycle. Once it's been approved or rejected, there's an accountability issue there. My gut feeling is the author needs to own it. But not sure how that jives with right-to-be-forgotten, for instance
There should be in place a mechanism to transfer the ownership of a proposal to another author, no only collaborative proposals but any kind.
As an author I could transfer ownership to another user (or group), when receiver accepts, complete the process (I'd would be able to cancel it meanwhile not accepted).
Conversation with Antti Hukkanen
Regarding these points, I would rather like the collaboration options to be open by default without having an extra checkbox in the wizard. How about if the participant doesn't want to allow collaboration, they could disable it after publishing the proposal (on/off switch on the proposal page)?
should the collection of endorsements and/or supports be allowed while proposals are open for editing? In my opinion clearly not.
As I mentioned above for this point, this is very location specific how serious the trust issues are with this. I wouldn't see it becoming a problem around the Nordic countries that someone endorses a proposal that could be edited later on. I do understand that in some places of the world it could be problematic.
The comment formatting was messed up above. The last part is not a quote, the bullets 2 and 3 are comments for bullet 1.
The last part is a comment for the collection of endorsements/supports.
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