The discussion revolves around whether decision-making features are possible on Discourse, similar to those offered by Loomio. Loomio features include proposals with consent, dot votes, slider votes, and majority votes. Falco suggests that some of these features can be replicated on Discourse using existing tools, such as polls and the Discourse Voting plugin. However, Falco also notes that more complex polling systems might be better handled by dedicated tools like Typeform or Google Forms, which can be embedded into a topic. thoka questions how Loomio manages the allocation of dots in dot votes. Falco concludes that while Discourse can facilitate decision-making, it focuses on achieving consensus through discussion and paragraphs rather than complex voting systems.
Make a proposal that will be accepted or rejected using consent (all members find the proposal to be good enough, regardless of whether everyone loves it).
Run a dot vote (Each participants receives n dots, which they can assign to m ideas, where multiple dots can point to the same idea).
Run a slider vote (participants allocate points from, say, 1-100 for each of n items, where 100 quantifies very desirable and 1 quantifies low desirability).
It would be interesting to know how loomio manages the ammount of dots. Are there groups of different proposals for one main topic ?
With the voting plugin a user is able to issue n votes in total on the whole discourse, IIRC.
In general, if you need any fancier poll system it’s easier to use a tool that is dedicated to it, like Typeform or Google Form support in Onebox? and embed it into a topic.
Discourse can be very much used for “decision” as stated in the title, but the type of decision we focus is one achieved after all the involved parts dish it our using paragraphs, and a consensus can then be constructed.