Propose new functionalities for Decidim software
#DecidimRoadmap Designing Decidim together
For about every Decidim instance we have made, we have made a customization to show all rejected proposals after the proposals have been evaluated. There is barely any exception to this rule, this is a request from ALL the cities.
Many people do not notice they can filter the view and the rejected proposals are filtered out by default. Or they simply don't understand how the filtering options work.
We have heard furious feedback from citizens that claim the city is trying to hide information by hiding all the rejected proposals. The citizens really feel this is wrong and the city is not listening to them this way.
Decidim's Social Contract states the following:
==== QUOTATION START ====
The platform, and its current or future configuration, development, deployment and use must ensure and maximize, at all times, the transparency, traceability and integrity of documents, proposals, debates, decisions, or any other object, mechanism or participatory process.
By transparency we understand that all data related to all such participatory mechanisms and processes are available for download, analysis and treatment, following the most demanding standards and formats to share information (accessibility, multi-format, etc.).
Transparency is a necessary condition for monitoring of participatory processes and mechanisms, but should never, in any case, be applied for the treatment of personal data or against the defense of the privacy of the people participating in the platform.
==== QUOTATION END ====
Hiding the rejected proposals by default violates the following in these statements:
- Maximization of transparency - If people have to make a filtering choice themselves and know how to make the system to function as transparent, we are not maximizing transparency.
- Data is available for download analysis and treatment - This data is not available and visible by default. The user has to make a choice for the data to appear in the UI.
- Accessibility of the data - Even if it is not violating any actual accessibility requirement, the data is simply not accessible to everyone if they don't know how to get the data to show up. They think the city/municipality is trying to hide the data they don't want to show.
Technically this change is rather simple. It would just involve changing the default filtering criteria on this line:
Therefore, I suggest we show also rejected proposals by default in order to answer the citizens' concerns and in order to make Decidim comply with Decidim’s Social Contract.
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9 comments
It seems a good idea to me but I am afraid that over here we would found the opposite case, hide rejected by default.
Couldn't we turn this into a configuration option? maybe in the admin side (per participatory space or component) or, at least, as an initializer.
Conversation with Oliver Azevedo Barnes
@ahu how are you currently customizing the instances to show rejected proposals?
Add "rejected" to this line: https://git.io/JkIjd
Conversation with Carol Romero
Thanks for opening the discussion @ahu. Not showing the rejected proposals is part of the logic of a standard process, thinking that if you are in the prioritization phase, you do not want to show the rejected ones to not add noise.
Without having specific numbers right now, I'd say however that the ratio of rejected proposals is generally not very high in relation to the total.
Curious to hear about other cities/orgs. Have you got this kind of feedback too? @josanFFiG @virgile_deville ?
Like Antti I've always been surprised that rejected proposals do not appear on the index. It's a sign of transparency.
Yup, beyond the logic I mentioned above, I don't see any other reason to have them unchecked by default.
I want to add to this point that in the Finnish context, there can be a larger amount of rejected proposals. The proposals/ideation phase in general is seen as a "fuel" for the innovation, so the quantitative aspect is high during that phase. To me it seems the cities here in general would rather have a large amount of "templates for actual proposals" than less ideas which are ready for implementation. The actual proposal is made through co-creation where the ideas serve as a starting point.
So to put this into the context, many people submit ideas which may not follow the pre-defined criteria, and thus will be rejected before the next phase. These are still valuable for the city and they may also guide the people during the ideation phases of the following years as they can check what kind of ideas generally get accepted/rejected.
Also, when the rejected idea gets hidden, it can leave the feeling for the participant that their opinion doesn't' matter.
Hi everybody, i work for the Municipality of Milan in the managing of their Decidim platform Milano Partecipa.
I really think that this feature should be a configuration option in the admin interface, because the decision to show rejecteed proposals or not it's strongly related on the kind of process that you're dealing with. For example in the participatory activities that we're managing now it would be really bad to hide rejected proposals. But in the voting phase of a PB for example, it would be good.
Thanks to @ahu to rise this issue.
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