BuddyPress.org

I’ve not seen this. How about adding a voting option for BP Groups.

And I’m not talking about the Favorite or FB Like Button, but a bonafied capacity to do voting – or for some people “Make Community Decisions” democratically or in modified versions.

I’m of course interested in the modified version since a lot of activist communities seek to gain consensus vs. a mere 50% + 1 vote.

Such an addition would look just like a Forum or the BP Docs with its own menu. Each member of the group could go there and do the following:

Phase I:

Participate in either with real time chat or with comments in the creation of the wording of the proposed issue to be voted on. This section would also have the capacity to schedule a vote and announce it to the group. This module would also be able to identify several different types of votes that could take place from selecting a person for a position, a straw vote or informal poll on an issue, the real vote or an appeal/call for revote.

Phase II:

The vote Module

Of course, this would be where a variety of formats would be defined by the phase I type of vote and then allow each user to enter their own voting booth and make a decision.

Phase III

Vote tabulation and archiving

This of course would be how each individual vote is setup, much like a standard post with the ability to save comments (discussion threads) that could be closed by the admin but all of it could be held as a single event in the database. Of course just as people have elections, the archiving cycle should also be able to frame votes by time or far more important for small communities by subject. So that a group could interweave the voting plugin/option could then be woven directly into the groups bylaws. By this, I’m saying that each voting event then be given a URL so that it could then be directly linked to a public or private document like the groups internal bylaws if they want.

You do this, and you’ve taken the next step in really making a community that can make online decisions!