Crowdfunding web applications? Is this becoming a new thing?<p>Send us 100k, and we'll finish our beta application, and give you rewards, like your name in the code, or for $500, you can have a coffee with us on video chat. Or for $25,000, fly yourself here, and we'll give you a tour of the city and cook you dinner. Does this not sound crazy to anyone else?<p>If they raise an extra $150k, they'll develop extras, such as <i>a plug-in architecture to enable an ecosystem of open-source plug-ins for different discussion and decision-making protocols that will scale to much larger groups</i>. I don't know what the hell that even means, but isn't it a little irresponsible to even consider such features when you haven't made an official release, and proven the concept has any long term traction?<p>If you can't tell, this entire thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. After 18 months of beta they're unable to launch, or make enough sales to organizations to fund their development, so they're asking the crowd for a 100k donation? I don't believe their software is as life changing as the video makes it out to be, and I don't think they have a viable business. I expect them to burn through the money, launch, and fade away.
So excited to see Loomio on the frontpage of Hacker News! I've long dreamed of an effective web app for consensus decision making processes (and even thought about building one) but as a user of Loomio for over a year I can say they've done almost everything right -- even down to having some serious design chops. I'm so excited to see where they will be able to take this with the money they've raised (hit your goal today! woot!) and look forward to introducing more activist organizations, especially those with people in many geographical locations, to Loomio. Great job to all the devs and designers and alpha and beta testers!<p>For those of you who don't know, consensus decision making is not just a willy-nilly free for all. Over the years it has been refined by groups, it has developed strong points of process that help ensure it actually is a decision making process, not just a discussion that goes in circles or goes nowhere. (including the infamous hand signals that many saw during Occupy). If you are interested in consensus decision making, I highly recommend checking out this classic book.<p><a href="http://consensus.net/pdf/consensus.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://consensus.net/pdf/consensus.pdf</a><p>While I don't think formal consensus decision making is the best tool for non-hierarchical decision making i all circumstances, I do think it is quite powerful /when used correctly/. Historically this has required strong facilitation skills and other roles (timekeeper, temperature checker, etc) -- all of which play their part in keeping the process working as designed.<p>Loomio has created a platform for decentralized non-hierarchical decision making that bakes in some crucial features /to accomplish formal consensus decision making/. All the activists I know that have tried it have been impressed by the dev team's responsiveness and dogfooding (Loomio uses Loomio), and have found the features enable formal consensus decision making in a way that a discussion board or voting polls or similar tools that aren't quite designed for consensus just don't.
I really like the platform. It enables people to conduct the decision making in a way that is followed in formal committees, and even the UN. People present options, everyone talks about them, then when it seems that the group is converging towards a solution, you present a proposal. And then everyone votes on it (and not just a yes or no!). So it's pretty cool.<p>I just have one concern, does only the leader present proposals? or can everyone do it? To me, letting only the leader (OP) do that makes sense. otherwise wouldn't everyone be just doing that instead of posting suggestions?
My pet peeve is projects that don't describe what they do. Thought process while reading:<p>> Loomio is a user-friendly tool for collaborative decision-making:<p>Piqued my interest.<p>> not majority-rules polling, but actually coming up with solutions that work for everyone.<p>Skeptical because it promises to get rid of office politics. I want to know specifics how and why it works. Cold, hard, game-theory and/or economics. Maybe there is something useful behind that marketing-speak.<p>> We’re a small team in New Zealand, and we’ve built a prototype that people are already doing great things with.<p>Total non-sequitur. I don't care who you are. Convince me why the product works before I invest more effort.<p>> Now we’re crowdfunding so we can build the real thing: a new tool for truly inclusive decision-making.<p>Ah, it doesn't work yet.<p>> Youtube video<p>Sorry, I'm not going to spend an hour of my time when you've already proved yourself a bad steward of the last five minutes.<p>Contrast this to xerophtye's comment: short, punchy explanation how Loomio works.
I know some of the people involved in this project, and I've recently started trying to contribute. It's really cool to see New Zealand open source software doing well in the wider community.<p>I've also used it personally for a few things and I think the idea has really good potential. It ties open decision making into a discussion quite well. Try it out.<p><a href="https://github.com/loomio/loomio" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/loomio/loomio</a>
Thanks to everyone for checking out Loomio! If anyone has questions, please feel free to ask away (several of the team members have answered a few already).
Here is a different approach (a mash-up of StackExchange, reddit, Wikipedia, and hallojs):<p>* <a href="http://davidjarvis.ca/world-politics/" rel="nofollow">http://davidjarvis.ca/world-politics/</a><p>* <a href="https://bitbucket.org/djarvis/world-politics/" rel="nofollow">https://bitbucket.org/djarvis/world-politics/</a><p>See also:<p>* <a href="http://hallojs.org/" rel="nofollow">http://hallojs.org/</a>
Loomio is a great platform. A simple, yet elegant way to tap into the collective knowledge and decision making in organizations. Really recommend it!<p>I've already supported the crowdfunding and planning on contributing to the open source community as well. There is huge potential in Loomio!
This concept reminds me of the non-hierarchical decision making by consensus process that groups such as 'Reclaim the Streets' tried to implement a couple of decades ago.<p>However, 'Reclaim the Streets' never asked anyone for any donations. That made them very different to your typical 'save the world' group where the main point of the org/charity is just that, soliciting donations.<p>Like many people here I don't quite get what the money is needed for, even though it is spelled out. I also had a look at the github and it looks like things are aeons away from the 'Wordpress 5 minute install'. The Wordpress 5 minute install really is too much technical wizardry for a lot of folk, they need an 'I.T. Expert' (TM) to do it for them. Wordpress offer hosted versions to get around this trifle and I am sure that is the way to go, however, if you are open sourcing the code and expecting people to host their own, being open source is not enough, it has to be reasonably easy to install.<p>Every man, dog and cat rolls a few Rails apps before their breakfast in The Valley, so it is no big deal. Yet for the people that are just about okay uploading something like Wordpress to their 'FTP server' and setting up a database through some hideous 'cPanel' contraption do matter. These are the people likely to be administrators of a group somewhere that could benefit from your software.
Great project, have my $12.<p>FYI - the website takes a very long time to load in Australia, I would suggest using a CDN to improve international load times.