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 someone answered one of your questions - please remember to edit the page and set the status to answered. The status selector is 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

I like this Template and wanted to extend it to do multi-level bullets and also headings.

I came up with this code:

TMPL:DEF{PROMPT:BulletH1H2B1B2}%<ul><li><input type="text" name="comment" size=50>
<input %DISABLED% type="radio" name="BulletHeadingText" value="---+ " />H1
<input %DISABLED% type="radio" name="BulletHeadingText" value="---++ " />H2
<input %DISABLED% type="radio" name="BulletHeadingText" checked="checked" value="   * " />B1
<input %DISABLED% type="radio" name="BulletHeadingText" value="      * " />B2
<input %DISABLED% type="submit" value="Add Bullet/Heading" /></li></ul>%TMPL:END%
%TMPL:DEF{OUTPUT:BulletH1H2B1B2}%%POS:BEFORE%%<nop>URLPARAM{"BulletHeadingText"}%%<nop>URLPARAM{"comment"}% 
%TMPL:END%

I would like to add the signature and date to the end of the bullets but not to the headings but the use of an IF statement in the Output format defeated me.....

I tried to test the BulletHeadingText string - IF this did not start with "---" then put in %WIKINAME% %SERVERTIME% type fields.

-- NeilGood - 11 Dec 2008

This is not tested, but worth a try:

%TMPL:DEF{OUTPUT:BulletH1H2B1B2}%%POS:BEFORE%%URLPARAM{BulletHeadingText}%%URLPARAM{comment}%%CALC{$IF($EXACT($REPLACE(%URLPARAM{BulletHeadingText}%,4,10,), ---), , -- %WIKINAME% - %DATE%)}%
 %TMPL:END%

-- PeterThoeny - 13 Dec 2008