An open source group decision making tool.

The last few decades have given us many tools for communicating and collaborating with each other. However, most of those tools are focused on casual interaction or business. There is a distinct lack of tools which address one of the fundamental modes of communication in our society.

From small student groups and communities, national organizations of thousands, everyone relies on some form of communication to make decisions as group.

A tool which is capable of facilitating the process of making a decision as a large group. Must support groups of hundreds of people without requiring significant time from every participant.

The tool should facilitate decisions which are:

• constructive
• actionable
• transparent
• inclusive
• informed

The high level components that make up the Quill system.

• Document editor - https://github.com/substance/substance
• Web application - React + ?
• API backend - Swagger API definition + ?
• Data storage - ?
• Document import
  • support importing documents from other common formats into quill format
• Document export
  • export a document and all feedback to a common format
• User service
  • user profiles consist of a list of links to other sites which provide the information
  • user photos using gravitar
  • auth using oauth from other sites + mozilla persona
  • stores notification address (sms, email, irc, slack)
• Notification service
  • allows users to subscribe to any tree and receive notifications on updates
  • stores user subscriptions with the chosen notification option
  • sends notifications
• Ingestion service
  • accept feedback from email, etc (sms?, slack?, irc?)

Problem statement

Describes the problem which requires the decision to be made. Provides context about why a decision is being made, and what is required to consider the decision acceptable or complete.

Document

A multi-version multimedia (text, diagrams, etc) which describes the decision. A document is a collection of content blocks.

Content block

Each section of a document is a content block: headings, paragraph, diagrams, videos, lists, etc

Feedback

A response to a problem statement, document, or other feedback item. Includes a position, and text which elaborates on the position. A response is always directly tied to a content block, and a selection of text within that block (if the block is text).

Position

A categorization of a feedback item, by the feedback contributor that describes intent:

• support - strong agreement with additional evidence
• accept - weaker agreement
• challenge - neither agreement or disagreement, the item is incomplete, or needs additional facts, or references.
• oppose - disagreement
• ignore - the item is not interesting, or not relevant
• violation - the item is fake, intentionally misleading, sponsored by a third-party, fraudulent, offensive, or otherwise breaks protocol