Log: incoming feedback in raw format

[bruno]

Feedback from Willi, Foodsharing Fürth Germany

1 Legal Holidays in activity series with „Weekly Frequency“:
How manage a legal holiday? We have about 10 - 15 activities every day.
Change everyone single activity on a legal holiday to „inactive“ looks not good in the „Activity“-listing and everyone who looks for new activities must everytime scroll away all this „inactive activities“ .
E.g.: Inactivate a whole day with 1 command?

2 Activity series with enddate:
How can we manage 20 days activity (f.e. pickups at Christmas Market)? Activity series „Weekly frequency“ cannot be end on exactly day and shows always 1 day more and we have to wait 7 days to set this serie on inactive.
I set 7 times everyday the „new“ pickup to „Inactive“. That looks not good in the listing.

3 Meetings, Events:
When the 10 slots are occupied, the others who will take part had to write their name as text in „Additional information“.
We need about 20 slots for meetings and about 30 slots for events.
Perhaps make an automatic extension with always 1 more free slot?
And with a total numbering?

4 Feedback:
Reminder for all open feedbacks disturbes. I see everytime in the „Wall“ the reminder „27 activities await your feedback“. We dont need it.
Weight input is not social for the foodsavers with the small markets. We don`t want to see it.
For statistic we are interessetd to see the amount number of the activities at stores, distributions, …

5 Name of days in „actvities“:
PC web-version shows the name of the next day in the middle of the mainwindow and when you scroll over 10 – 15 activities on every day you overlook the name oft the next day and you loose the orientation on what day you are now.

6 Monogram letters from members in the slots:
The letters need more contrast to the background, because they are samll on smartphone and and hard to recognize by much (sun-)light.
2 letters are not enough. We have 3 x JB. Perhaps 4 letters? E.g…: JoBö.

PC web-version shows the whole name when you touch the monogram letters with the mouse, but the smartphone app does not show the name, so you must open the slot with the letters and than you can see the profile with the name. We are about 60 members in total, we can not know everyone by heart.
After that, you have to start again from beginning and not at the activitie where you have been before.

[nicksellen]

Here’s the feedback I collected from my local bioregional group:

last night I did a short feedback round within my local bioregionalism group, who have been trialling karrot for 6-8 months now. on karrot the group has 19 members, of which 9 are considered “active”. the in-person group meetings are usually monthly, and 6-8 people attend.

I used the rose/thorn/bud format to collect the feedback, it’s a mix of how karrot is for the group itself, and how karrot is as a tool.

the previous communication tool was a big email “list”, which was just a lot of people in the CC field of an email chain.

roses

• liberating to use, nice design
• like the sunday digest
• lovely content shared on it
• really really like not having inbox filled up, can dip in and out
• love knowing agenda of meeting
• like getting notifications in email inbox
• a bunch of roses for sorting it out and nudging us to adopt it
• a godsend! enormous improvement over email threads (many nods), was difficult to keep track of before, a step change
• nice to see who is coming to a meeting, and use specific chat for the event
• don’t use email, nice to be able to switch off the email notifications, can dip in when wanted

thorns

• not sure where to post news items
• hard to follow flow of conversations sometimes
• get mention notifications, but can’t find where the message is
• don’t see all conversations (but blames self) [might be in threads]
• can’t find past activities, to find out what’s been said, what was on agenda, etc
• issue when trying to adjust meeting time, where people were kicked out
• would be nice to have ability to adjust individual meetings in a series for one-off alterations
• amount of engagement isn’t very high, quite a few big long essays written, don’t have time for that, only a bit of skimming (but maybe this is about me)

buds

• interested where it will develop
• loads of fantastic resources shared, podcasts, references, but they get a bit lost in conversations, can we develop a library of resources?
• haven’t played with much beyond the basics, creating a thread, … interested to see if I can find a place to share my journalling of place and barefoot walking?
• loads, how to bring communities and software together more
• would love to attach documents!

[bruno]

From Daniel, Luxembourg:

Indeed, it is true that we are discussing to switch to foodsharing.network, and I still think it is related to our group size, which does not work so well on Karrot. Here are the main reasons:

Currently, we are asking new people to do a registration on our website to have all their data, a registration on our Mattermost server and a registration on Karrot. Signing up on 3 places and getting used to 2 systems overwhelms many new people, especially people without so many technical skills. This also creates a lot of admin work, especially when having more and more people. One platform would be best for solving this issue.
The trust system on Karrot does not work for our group. We have had issues with people changing places or our group without having the right to do so; Some also did it by mistake “because it was possible”. Therefore, we also don’t dare to use the new trust for “approved” role feature for test pickups; One click is enough to get somebody approved, and there would be no way to undo this by our Onboarding team themselves.
While it is nice that everybody can sign up for each activity on Karrot, this has resulted in some issues. An ecological problem is that people do activities far away, e.g. driving through the whole country for picking up 2 loaves of bread. Cooperation Managers often need more control and want, for instance, to give an introduction pickup as some shops have very special agreements, and they want to keep people from going again when they created trouble in the past, at least as long as the issue is resolved.
Having some sub-groups like the “Bezirke” on foodsharing.network also looks appealing to us to better represent our geographical circles.

Running an own instance of Karrot might solve some of the issues above, but it would require some sysadmin work.

I am happy to exchange further. I still love Karrot.

[nicksellen]

Request for bell notifications when new activities are created (from a friend who is trialling karrot for a group in Bath):

Secondly my query was…someone in our group posted a new activity in a place that I had favourited, but it didn’t show up in my notifications on the app. I only saw it as I happened to be looking at ‘history’.

I’ve turned off all email notifications and would rather not use that to hear about things. Is there something I need to do to be notified of new activities or is that just how it works?

[bruno]

From Nick:

Just logging a couple of bugs here that I noticed during a live karrot demo yesterday.

1. After being accepted into a new group, and being trusted as editor, new activity button on activities page didn’t have list of activity types populated, page refresh got them

2. Someone just showed me a notification for a membership review where the email subject had the name of the person receiving the email, not the person the membership review is about.

[Kranti]

Suggestions from Food Saving Leuven group:

1. Currently, there is no way of knowing how many active volunteers we have. The ‘members’ tab shows the number of active members based on whether they have logged in to Karrot.world in the last 3 months, not based on whether they have done pickups. It could be good to see the complete list of volunteers in the statistics tab to see who has done/missed/no-shows how many pick ups in last week/month/year.
   (I hope my explanation is understandable, or else I am happy to elaborate).

2. Continuing on the need to limit ‘no shows’, is there a way to disable signing out less than 24 hours after the pickup? We discussed this in our previous meeting. However, I do not remember what was the final consensus. (I will look up the minutes to find out).

3. Is there a way/possibility to limit the number of times a person can do a pickup? Some of our shops are very popular, and there is a constant battle to sign up for those.

4. Is there a way to fetch the contact details of the active members? We would like to send a monthly newsletter to the active members.

[bruno]

From David, Robin Foods:

it would be great if people dont get kicked out by the system after some months of inactivity… is it possible to have a group setting for that? kick out after 12 months or so?

I would prefer 18 Months or to have 3 setting options:

• 6
• 12
• 18 months
  would be enough for me

[bruno]

From Dave…

So now I analysed what we need for really effective organising as we r growing and have more and more events coming up…

Roles (that can act as pariticpant type): I click “add participant types” and can select predefined roles with the description already included… and add additional information if there is something special for that role. eg. cargo Rider: We need resuced veggies, no bread needed!

Share single activities with possibilty to sign up for a lot without registration (would be a definitiv gamechanger feature for our movement) → It will be like a doodle, that we send out and anyone can sign up… maybe a page with captcha to avoid spam and some basic infos and also inform the people that they can do more if they register on carrot to be part of the movement. this will make organising a lot more easier for us…

A “duplicate event” feature would be great. Sometimes we have unregular events of the same type, like fermentation. instead of creating a new text everytime, a duplicate feature would be great. Maybe a filter on the history view with option of a duplicate button would also really help us in organisation.

[nicksellen]

from efa:

EfAs are mostly older food rescuers in rural areas.

We save food exclusively in order to demonstrably do good for people and the environment.

Unlike young food-sharers in the university towns, who have a natural affinity for internal affairs and everything that goes with it, our helpers often have difficulties registering in Karrot at all.

So we don’t need so many tools for our EfA helpers, but they are as simple as possible and self-explanatory for inexperienced users.

Unfortunately, none of us will be on the playground either.

Even excluding someone from Karrot through the confusing voting modes is a big act. For many of our helpers, the procedure and what hooks they have to push are completely incomprehensible.

[nicksellen]

feedback about collaborative pads:

We often publish a list of empty pickups on a public wall to mobilize others to do them. Then we gradually cross out the elements as they get taken by someone. “Only empty activities” query does the same thing, but a post is more compact and engaging. A tasks list feature would be perfect to manage that. Would it be possible to add a switch for the author to make it editable by author only / by all?

Nice simple feature! I agree that these could be used as task trackers. I could also imagine that a open pad button at meeting activities would be nice for note taking or whatever. Then, it also needs to be linked automatically in the history so that people can easily find it back. Maybe, a flag for enabling such a button could be added to the activity types config so that each group can enable them for the activities they want to use them with.

I don’t know if it was intended but it looks like I can still add text to it even if that wasn’t the pad author’s intention.
It would be nice to Ctrl+Click on a link within the pad. Maybe it is related to #1 above but it is something I’ve gotten used to doing in, for example, text documents e.g. LibreOffice, Google Docs etc.

[nathalie]

Feedback von EfA

Wenn mal wieder etwas Zeit ist bitte setzt auch wieder zurück, damit nach der Abgabe des Feedbacks das System nicht immer an den Anfang zu den ersten Feedbacks zurückspult. Da wir schon viele Feedbacks abgegeben haben für einen Betrieb ist es ziemlich nervig, kaum hat man ein Feedback abgegeben und auf Enter gedrückt, da rattert das System Jahre zurück und zeigt die allerersten Feedbacks, die aber eigentlich gar nicht interessieren. Man muss dann immer schnell raus gehen und Feedback nochmals aufrufen, um das aktuelle Feedback, das man gerade abgegeben hat zu sehen…

[nathalie]

Further roles improvements feedback from Nathalie:

• what to do about inactive members
  • inactive group members are shown in editor roleholder section
  • could have the same filter as on member page
• member card looks a bit empty
  • have a link to members page
  • could move the whole members page into roles member subpage
  • (is it clear from the logic though? membership as a role??
• give editor a custom name
  • I like that it still says edits in ()
  • also keeps referring to editor in all other places (e.g. when giving trust)
• what to show when role holders is none (on the roles page)
• created at
  • in less than a minute
  • less than a minute ago
  • (should report a bug in codeberg)
• difference between place and group roles is very minimal
  • only way to find group roles is among other roles
  • filter on roles overview?
  • sections on page?
  • colour-code group roles in group colour?
• from where to assign roles
  • group
    • role card - yes
    • role description - yes
    • place - there is no
  • place
    • role card - no
    • role description - yes
    • place - yes
• does it really need to role holders on roles overview page?
• notify role holders when role description change?
  • nick: also consideration of a way to enforce certain notifications for certain roles (e.g. welcomer role could force “new application” notification to be enabled)
  • nick: also potentially change how the interface looks (show/hide things) dependent on the role?
• it doesn’t show role holder limit on description page, only in edit interface
• screen reader testing
  • can’t navigate to role description page through card? doesn’t show url?
    • make role cards ? like place cards?
  • card view and menue vue don’t have description
    • adding button description/labels/tooltips
  • role page view: plus, edit, don’t have description (button), delete place also no button description

[nathalie]

Feedback from Nathalie/ roles feedback pad

Approved role without trust?

• see Karrot
• maybe some legacy situation that the member that approved is not in the group any longer?
• nick:
  • if you get enough trust for approved role then you get the role
  • if that trust is taken away you keep the role still!
  • editor is the only trust-based role that can be removed by taking back trust
  • not saying it should work like this, just that it does
• a bit confusing to see approved but no trust
• Vas also mentioned that it might be worth reviewing the approved feature

‘Show archived’ on roles overview only visible for editors

• nick:
  • I think kind of intentional? but could also make it available for all

[nicksellen]

@Jay reporting a small security issue:

when applying to a group, the name of the members replying to the applications are replaced by a question mark, but not in the email notifications. I was able to see name and surname of the people replying to me in the email notifications I received when applying (even though my application was never accepted)

[GOGOGO]

When I applied to the group, two people who responded were actually marked as ?. Strangely, I only received a confirmation email with the name of one person, but I didn’t receive an email confirmation for the second person who represented the group and was the first to respond and reject my application.

[nicksellen]

Feedback from Robin Foods:

and one more little thing: maybe u can forward this - after 60days people get kicked out - a setting where we can change that would be nice or extend it to 120 days or so… lots of people want to join after some time and get demotivated because they were kicked

Makes sense to have it as a group setting I think…

[nathalie]

Von EfA (auf die Fragen habe ich schon separat geantwortet)

1. Wer bekommt die Info, wenn man “Unterhaltung öffnet” und eine Nachricht verschickt in einem Favoriten Betrieb an einem Datum?
   Ist es niemand, weil z.B. noch niemand eingetragen ist für diesen Termin, oder
   sind es alle, die den Betrieb als Favoriten haben?
   Hintergrund meiner Frage ist, dass wir rund 60 Mitglieder sind. Immer nur eine kleine Gruppe kümmert sich idR um einen Betrieb und hat ihn als Favoriten.
   Bisher läuft es jedoch so, wenn einer mal einen Ersatz braucht, dann schreibt er an die Wall und rund 60 Leute erhalten eine Mail, obwohl es z.B. nur 5 interessiert.
   Das möchte ich gerne verbessern. Ich möchte die Wall für die Infos belassen, die wirklich an alle gerichtet ist.

2. Automatisches Scrolling nach Abgabe eines Feedbacks:
   Könntet ihr da bitte wieder abstellen. Es war nicht immer so.
   Wenn man seit einiger Zeit ein Feedback gibt, dann dann scrollt das System gleich nach der Abgabe zurück zu den allersten Feedbacks, die für diesen Betrieb gegeben wurden. Bei uns sind das mehrere Jahre. Das ist ziemlich nervig.

3. Vereinfachung der Löschung von Mitgliedern, die sich nicht mehr melden und ggf. nur Daten abgreifen:
   Hier sind wir nicht auf dem neusten Stand, aber wir müssen demnächst wieder einmal aufräumen bei unseren Mitgliedern. Einige fallen nicht auf inaktiv, weil sie die App immer öffnen. Gleichzeitig sind sie z.B. seit längerem nicht mehr dabei, melden sich jedoch nicht aus dem System ab.
   Hier wünschen wir uns ein weniger aufwendiges System den Mitgliederstamm zu bereinigen.

[nicksellen]

Joining a new discord group two ideas came up that inspired me to have ideas for Karrot.

1. Joining questions

It had a nice dialogue with a set of questions (custom for the group) that I had to answer, I thought that was a nice feature!

I’m not actually sure if I had to answer them before joining, or after I joined…

It had questions that would then detirmine which channels you automatically got added to, things that might go into your profile, etc…

For karrot it might have options to:

• automatically subscribe you to certain places
• configure your roles in a certain way
• update your profile/phone number or picture (although these are currently instance-wide…)
• write an introduction message that gets posted to the group wall? or some other place wall…

These feel like kind of “post-joining” questions so maybe don’t fit into the application process… (which could also have custom questions to be answered). Not sure

2. External verification process

Actually, this is not a feature of discord, but a manual process they have added.

In order to find out if you are actually a proper signed up green party member (which is stored in a separate membership system), they ask you to manually share your account info, and someone will check it, then add you to specific groups I guess.

In the context of Karrot, I was thinking about those groups that have an organisation structure that is not fully represented in Karrot (most of the bigger groups seem to have a legal entity or some association). For those, they might have processes outside of Karrot to elect people to board membership or similar.

We could have a feature whereby Karrot can make a request to query an external resource (could be an externally hosted spreadsheet, or public info on an official webpage, or whatever…), and then make those users in Karrot have specific “external” roles.

That could then allow certain people in the group to access features that are not otherwise available to “self organised only” mode Karrot…

It kind of goes back on some of the self-organised vibe of Karrot, where we try and have community-only power structures, but the reality is that groups maintain an external organisational structure anyway… so at the very least could make it visible within Karrot.

Groups are able to request manual changes to the database (e.g. removing users) already, so this could be a way to enable those actions to be done directly by those members - and code an accountability process for it (so any actions are logged for the group to see).

[nathalie]

One feedback I got in a conversation

If I could only disable the things I don’t need.

Also the list of activities you signed up for seems to be confusing, as it blocks your view of the main wall or you need to scroll down quite a bit.

Mobile seems to be the primary use.

The group is really small (4 members). We use activities quite a bit for events (to coordinate the use of a shared space). Each event needs a “buddy”. The buddy doesn’t need to be there all the time, but makes sure the person hosting the event has everything they need (access to the physical space, knows the rules, signed the contract etc.). The people hosting are not in the karrot group, the ones who can be buddies are. I thought that’s a nice usecase for participant types but what was confusing is the language of “join activity” as you don’t necessarily join, but “take care of it”. I guess that’s not a big deal as we figure out how to adapt karrot to our use case.

Another conversation that came up is the need for an internal place. E.g. a place that can only be accessed by certain roles, so you can have a more private discussion. Back to our scenario, we are (or I am ) wondering whether to invite more people to the group. But it’s clear that only certain people can take decisions e.g. what events to hosts (there is the possibility to object) or who is the buddy for what. As everything is open and accessible in karrot, there is the concern that discussions can blow up or that people interfere in discussions where they have now decision power and that doing the actual work will get draining. Or that it’s just difficult to say “no” to a request when the person who’s asking is in the same group and can see your discussion about it.

Personal note: it’s an interesting scenario for me, as I’m deeply involved in karrot and came in with a vision of how the software could be used, but what’s actually needed might be different to how I imagine a community to run