andreslucena

I think it was because I just created the account and put too many links on my first post. It seems the comments are coming back from the death.

> How does it compare with YourPriorities[0]?

Your Priorities was one of our main inspirations at the beginning, as an open source software that also had a strong relationship with the municipal level, on their case Reykjavík (Iceland). The main differences are that on YourPriorities a user only discusses Proposals and has one way of supporting them, and on Decidim you have other kind of supports (for instance limiting how many votes an user can made) and other features besides Proposals (like Meetings, Results, Initiatives, Consultations, etc).

(Disclaimer: I know Robert personally since 2012 and he even came to our first anual meeting on Barcelona at 2016.)

> What are its strengths and weaknesses?

Strengths:

* Modular architecture: more than 15 community modules.

* Easy to upgrade (as a ruby gem)

* Multiple features: we try to allow any kind of participatory space (processes, assemblies, initiatives/petitions, consultations)

* Online / offline integration: through meetings with photos, documents, minutes and moderators with special permissions to create user accounts

* Multiple verification / authorization ways (SMS, sending a code through other ways, through municipal census on the case of cities, etc)

Weaknesses:

* At the moment could be difficult to install (it's a Ruby on Rails gem and generator so you need some Rails knowledge)

* Multiple bugs (working on them)

* UX and accessibility could improve

* No mobile app (yet)

At the moment we're not aware of any comparison with the other options, but one of our main points is being free and open source from the first day. We'd love if anyone can make this comparison.

The idea is that if you have any big organization where you want to make decisions (like a City, a Cooperative, an Asociation, a Foundation, an Union, a Politica Party).

Who gets and controls membership (aka verification or authorization) is a decision made by this organization:

* Sending a SMS code to users to verify that their have a valid cellphone

* Allowing users to upload a photo or scanned image of their identity document

* Sending users a code through postal code

* Allowing users to go to to a physical office and check their documentation

* Checking some information through other systems (as a Municipal Census on the case of Municipalities, Cities or Towns)

* Having a list of valid users emails

More information regarding verifications at https://github.com/decidim/decidim/tree/master/decidim-verif...

Hi! I’m one of the founders. It’s really a nice surprise seeing this published here :D.

If you want to see the software on action you can use the demo here: https://try.decidim.org

Decidim it’s a participatory democracy platform where any organization can make decisions. There are Spaces (Participatory Processes, Assemblies, Consultations and Initiatives), and Components (like Proposals, Meetings, Surveys, Results)

At the technical level is made on Ruby on Rails. It’s a gem with multiple engines. The main idea is to have a ecosystem of modules allowing it to grow and handle the needs of any installation. It’s all open source with an open development process (we discuss every issue on GitHub, use Crowdin for translations, Gitter for chat, documentation made with Antora). GitHub: https://github.com/decidim/decidim

It’s a project started by Barcelona (Spain) City Hall, but at the moment it’s being used by more that 40 installations.

Some installations:

* http://decidim.barcelona/ - the first installation, used by Barcelona.

* https://meta.decidim.org/ - our own instance to discuss and make decisions about the software

* https://participation.lillemetropole.fr/ - metropolitan area of Lille (France)

* https://participa.somenergia.coop/ - Som Energia, a spanish electric cooperative

More installations at https://decidim.org/usedby/

If there are any more doubts you can contact us at hola [at] decidim [dot] org or leave a comment here.