Group are a more advanced version of single elections. They expand on the core mechanism, to deliver fair and efficient management of large groups, over long periods of time. This article will discuss how they work, and the best practices for using them.

Forum offers both managed and un-managed groups. Managed groups are run by a set of admins, who have the power to create polls, admit new members, and remove people. Participants in these groups can only respond to polls. We recommend this version for organisations that are just trying out direct democracy for the first time.

Un-managed groups embody the full vision of decentralised direct democracy. As with managed groups, anyone can set one up for a small fee, but an un-managed group has no distinction between admins and participants. Everyone has the same rights and powers.

In both managed and un-managed groups, the system will be most effective when people who create polls pay attention to feedback. This includes the built-in system for rating the quality, clarity and relevance of questions and options. It also covers informal, off-app feedback.

In a managed group, any admin can add or remove a participant at their sole discretion. They also have the right to change anyone’s status from participant to admin, or vice versa. Given that managed groups will typically be used by groups with an authority structure in place, admins will be few in number and known to one another, making it unlikely that any would abuse their power.

In un-managed groups, the decision of who to add works differently. Anyone can propose that a new person be accepted into the group, but they need a certain level of support from existing members. Existing members can navigate to a section of the group’s menu, and decide whether to support someone’s “application” to join the group.

This application is mediated by a quadratic pricing mechanism, that uses a different token-based currency to the polls within the group. Put another way, the mechanism is the same, but the tokens are not. If an application gets enough support within 3 weeks, they’re automatically added to the group, otherwise their application is rejected.

As for removing people, it works in much the same way. Anyone can propose that a member of the group be removed, and if the proposal achieves enough support within 3 weeks, the member is removed from the group. This system uses the same sub-currency of tokens that are used for adding members. The amount of popular support required to add/remove members scales with the size of the group.

In both managed and un-managed groups, there is a limit on how many tokens anyone can save up. This is done as an extra check to prevent a minority from exerting too much influence over the system, however the quadratic pricing mechanism already does a good job of preventing excessive minority influence.

All groups have a permanent record, that’s stored on each participating device. This enables users to see the entire history of the group; who joined and when, who was removed and when, which polls were created and how much support each of the options received. Individual votes are always private, to prevent groupthink and minimise retributions against unpopular minority opinions.

The permanent record can be analysed using the in-app analytics functions, which produce graphs and statistics to help you understand the trends within the group. You can also “download” the full dataset. This is technically a misnomer – thanks to the decentralised technology that underpins Forum, the data is already on your device, but you can export it to a CSV file and share the data.