Question

Is there a way to collect some fine-grain brainstorm information? What I'd like to to is have a form to enter/append a one line comment into a list on and editable page, such that a large group could quickly (faster than the locking mechanism) gather a set of ideas into a wiki page.

Use case:

• Users: a large group on a conference call or in a meeting
• Everyone brings up the page in a browser
• look at the existing ideas,
• Enter the idea in a form box
• Press 'go', reload, and think.
• After a period of time for stabilizing (5-15 minutes), a group leader stops the discussion and starts organizing the contributed ideas using the standard wiki editing mechanisms.

I imagine it would be something like a form-collector plugin, but it would need to work around/faster than the locking mechanism, but I'm not sure if one exists.

Environment

-- DavidForrest - 26 Oct 2005

Answer

If you answer a question - or have a question you asked answered by someone - please remember to edit the page and set the status to answered. The status is in a drop-down list below the edit box.

I saw Codev.UsabilityIdeas, Codev.FeatureBrainstorming, and Plugins.ExtensionBrainstorming but not an answer on how to use this software for high edit-rate brainstorming.

-- DavidForrest - 26 Oct 2005

Duh -- This add-comment box is similar to the feature I seek, but I'd like to tighten up the display into a bulleted list with the last bullet followed by a text-box and an 'add your idea' button.

Adding this to TWiki.UserTemplates makes this example work exactly like I want:

%TMPL:DEF{outputonelinerunsigned}%   * %URLPARAM{"comment"}%%TMPL:END%
%TMPL:DEF{PROMPT:bullet}%%TMPL:P{promptbox}%%TMPL:END%
%TMPL:DEF{OUTPUT:bullet}%%POS:BEFORE%%TMPL:P{outputonelinerunsigned}%
%TMPL:END%

• one
• two
• First idea !
• Time for coffee.
• Possibly better to change the input form to a one liner edit box
• What happens if I add more lines

• second line split bullet list apart
• Try it with a modified box...
• Maybe this
• one * two * three * four
• five
• Blub
• test

-- DavidForrest - 26 Oct 2005

Yes, you want CommentPlugin. Read docs and you will see how you can define a custom comment box. And if you're expecting rapid succession of edits, read up on UnlockTopic and the RELEASEEDITLOCKCHECKBOX preferences variable.

-- LynnwoodBrown - 26 Oct 2005

Thanks -- One needs to make sure that the edit lock is released before one invites comments from other people.

Maybe I should try to clean it up a bit:

%TMPL:DEF{PROMPT:bullet}%%TMPL:P{promptbox}%%TMPL:END%
%TMPL:DEF{OUTPUT:bullet}%%POS:BEFORE%   * %URLPARAM{"comment"}%%TMPL:END%

But I need to read up on the prompt code to make it a nice one-line text box with an "Add bullet" button.

-- DavidForrest - 01 Nov 2005

Next iteration of code for insertion in TWiki.UserTemplates:

%TMPL:DEF{PROMPT:bullet}%<input type="text" name="comment" size="50"><input %DISABLED% type="submit" value="Add Bullet" />%TMPL:END%
%TMPL:DEF{OUTPUT:bullet}%%POS:BEFORE%   * %URLPARAM{"comment"}%%TMPL:END%

-- DavidForrest - 02 Nov 2005

I changed the input form to a bullet to make it intuitive.

-- PeterThoeny - 02 Nov 2005

Thanks. It looks good.

I added a newline to the end of the output so it doesn't nest.

Now the bullet template is:

%TMPL:DEF{PROMPT:bullet}%<ul><li><input type="text" name="comment" size=50><input %DISABLED% type="submit" value="Add Bullet" /></li></ul>%TMPL:END%
%TMPL:DEF{OUTPUT:bullet}%%POS:BEFORE%   * %URLPARAM{"comment"}%
%TMPL:END%

-- DavidForrest - 02 Nov 2005