Open Floor: guide
What Open Floor does
Open Floor lets every member of a community raise an idea in their own words, respond to each other, and see everything drawn together without a good idea being averaged away. The people who run the community see where the room is, and members decide what to do about it.
It is for the questions a survey cannot ask, because nobody knows yet what to ask. How should the hall car park work? What would make meetings easier to get to?
A worked example: parking at the hall
The hall committee opens a floor with one prompt: what would make parking at the hall work better for everyone who uses it? Members add ideas over a week. The rest of this guide follows that floor.
More situations
- A workplace asking staff what to change. Everyone raises ideas in their own words, as themselves or as Anonymous. An owner or admin puts the floor on hold, so no new ideas come in, when enough has arrived, generates the summary, seals it and, if it is worth a proper deliberation, takes it to the Deliberation Village.
- A residents' group with a heated issue. A values objection is held whole beside the ideas it concerns: it is never averaged away. The summary also says how many ideas rest on one voice so far, so a quiet idea is not mistaken for a popular one.
- A member who changes their mind. They can take their own words back at any time, and respond again while the floor is open. Words taken back leave the list and any summary that was not yet sealed.
If you are a member
- Open the floor from the Open Floor page and read what is already there.
- Add your idea in your own words. You can add the reason behind it and the interest you are protecting, such as fairness, safety or cost.
- Choose how your name appears: your own name, a pen name, or anonymous.
- Endorse an idea you agree with. If you disagree, raise an objection and say why. You choose the kind: values, safety, effectiveness, process, resources or other.
- Change your mind whenever you like. You can take your own contribution back at any time, using the button on it.
If you run the floor (owners and admins)
- Open a floor: give it a title and a prompt, and choose who can see it (everyone in the community, or only you).
- When enough has come in, generate the summary. It groups ideas under the tags members chose for themselves and shows objections alongside them.
- Seal the summary where sealing is available for your Village. If sealing was not available when you generated it, you can seal it later.
- Pause, close or reopen the floor from the buttons at the top. A closed floor still lets people take their own words back.
- When the group is ready to decide, take a sealed summary to the Deliberation Village. A session is created there for your members to work in.
What protects people
- Nothing is scored, ranked or averaged. The summary shows ideas under the tags members chose and shows disagreement as disagreement.
- Where a group is too small to stay anonymous, its results are held back.
- When you take a contribution back, it is removed from the floor and from earlier summaries that were not sealed. A summary that was already sealed still holds it, because a change to a sealed record shows. The page tells you before you write.
What it does not do
- It does not decide anything. People decide.
- It does not rank ideas. An idea held by a few people is kept whole and credited, and is not outvoted by arithmetic.
- A pen name or an anonymous contribution is not attributed to a person in anything shown on the floor.