Debate

The Debate component allows people to have discussions, without voting nor prioritzation. It also allows to close them, by adding conclusions or a summary of what the discussion was about.

From this starting point, there could be other configurations, such as:

  • To allow debates creation by participants

  • To have debates with a fixed started and ending date or open

  • To show endorsements (public supports) or not

Some examples of where this component was used:

Debates listing example Debate example

To configure the Debate component:

  1. Sign in as admin

  2. Go to admin panel

  3. In the main sidebar, click in the button for the space that you want to configure the component for. For instance, it could be "Processes", "Assemblies" or "Conferences".

  4. Go to components

  5. Click on "Add component" button

  6. Click on "Debate"

  7. Fill the Add component form

Add component

Add component form

Table 1. Add component: Debate form
Field Type Description

Name

Required

What is the title of this component. For instance, "Debates"

Order position

Optional

Which order will it have in relation to the other debates. Having a lower number means a higher priority. For instance, if you have two debates, "Debate a" with weight "10" and "Debate b" with weight "0", then "Debate b" will be first when ordering.

Table 2. Add component: Debate form - Global settings
Field Type Description

Scopes enabled

Optional

Check if you want to have Scopes filtering in this component.

Scope

Optional

Which Scope does this component belongs to.

Global scope

Optional

Comments enabled

Optional

Whether you want to have comments in the meetings.

Comments max length

Optional

What is the characters limit that participants will have when making comments. Leave 0 for default value.

Announcement

Optional

A general announcement that’ll be visible on the general debates landing page.

In the cases where the space that this component will be used has Phases, for instance, in Participatory Processes, then you can also define different behaviors per Step.

Table 3. Add component: Debates form - Step settings
Field Type Description

Endorsements enabled

Optional

Check if you want that participants show public support for these debates.

Endorsements blocked

Optional

Debate creation by participants enabled

Optional

Check if you want to allow the creation of new debates by participants.

Comments blocked

Optional

Whether you want to enable comments for this phase.

Announcement

Optional

A general announcement that’ll be visible on the general debate landing page.

Permissions

An administrator can choose which kind of Authorizations a participant need to have to make certain actions in the debates:

  • Create

  • Endorse

Manage debates

Manage debates table

Export all

Allows exporting the comments in the debates in different formats.

  • Comments as CSV

  • Comments as JSON

  • Comments as Excel

New debate form

New debate backend form

Table 4. New debate form
Field Type Description

Title

Required

What is the title of this debate. For instance, "How can we improve this process?"

Description

Required

What is the description of this debate.

Instructions to participate

Required

Add a message for the participants.

Information updates

Optional

Add a message for the participants.

Debate type

Required

Choose between Finite and Open. Finite means that the debate has a starting and ending date and time, Open means that there isn’t any timeframe.

Starts at

Required if the debate type is Finite

Expected format: dd/mm/yyyy hh:ii

Ends at

Required if the debate type is Finite

Expected format: dd/mm/yyyy hh:ii

Category

Optional

Which category has the debate. Used for filtering in the debates list.

Debate types

It’s possible to have two kinds of debates:

  1. Finite: with a start and end date

  2. Open: without a start and end date

This is shown publically in the debate list.

Debates list Finite debate

Actions

Table 5. Actions
Icon Name Definition

Edit icon

Edit

Edit form for a debate. It’s the same form as "New debate".

Close icon

Close

Close form for a debate. For adding conclusions.

Permissions icon

Permissions

To handle the permissions of this debate, depending on the verification a participant has.

Delete icon

Delete

To delete this debate. Only can be done when there aren’t any projects.

Close debate form

A debate can be closed. This is useful for adding conclusions. After a debate was closed it can’t be edited nor commented any more

Close debate backend form

Take in account that if the debate was created by a participant then only that participant can close it.

Close debate frontend form

Table 6. Close debate form
Field Type Description

Conclusions

Required

What is the conclusion for this debate.

The conclusions are shown publicly with the close date and time.

Closed debate