Hi, the Commons team is developing an Ideation feature.

Critical features:

  • As a user I can see a list of existing ideas (within a group)
  • As a user I can vote up an idea.
  • As a user I can see how many votes I have remaining to cast within the current group
  • As a user I can suggest an idea
  • As a user I can comment on another user's idea
  • As a user, I can reorder idea list beteween Most popular (default) and Most recent
  • As a site-administrator administrator I need to configure the maximum votes that a user can cast within any group so that votes are meaningful
  • As an administrator, I want users to only be able to vote on ideas for groups of which they are a member
  • As a user I would like a block displaying the most recent ideas
  • As a group administrator I would like to edit an idea and indicate whether it is "in progress" or "implemented" and have that information clearly indicated for all users.

Attached is an example of the list of ideas within a group (reordered as Most recent, and Most popular), as well as the individual idea page. One thing that isn't reflected is that we want to go with a larger body font.

Feedback on these designs would be appreciated!

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Comments

lightsurge’s picture

This sounds great!

I've seen this exact sort of idea system before and my only real gripe with them is that sometimes good ideas get buried because they don't figure in the most recent or most popular categories. Sometimes it seems like an idea can get flattened in the most recent category by a dozen subsequent ideas, and those in the most popular category just get more and more popular.

It would be nice to leverage something like Calais for semantic analysis along with something like http://drupal.org/project/morelikethis, so that ideas can be flagged against other similar ideas, and also so that ideas can be flagged as relevant to nodes that aren't ideas. Basically some way of resurrecting good relevant ideas that for one reason or another (and not always a good reason) get buried forever at the bottom of the pile.

If 'user terms' were also automated and generated/added to based on content we submit/read, then you can see how there could then be another category to add to 'most recent' and 'most popular' - which would be 'may interest you'.

Face it, if we're being optimistic - people are too busy, or if pessimistic - too lazy, it's the minority really that would read through a long list of ideas!

ezra-g’s picture

Thanks for that feedback!

To note another Drupal solution for finding similar content, there is http://drupal.org/project/uniqueness which has support for using Apachesolr to search for similar nodes to the one being submitted.

ezra-g’s picture

Category: task » feature
Smag’s picture

Here are some notes and questions:

* The Proposed | In Progress | Done tabs are a great idea. That's good thinking. These tabs demonstrate that this isn't an academic exercise and that the best ideas actually get built. I'd consider using "Being implemented" instead of "In Progress". I had to think about In Progress for a second or two because I thought that it meant that these ideas were in progress, as in the idea maker was not quite finished writing it.
* What about going one step further and creating a page where the site recognizes/rewards the people behind the great ideas ?
* Some ideas are most easily understood through sketches, notes, annotated screenshots, etc. Why not make images first-class citizens in an idea? As a user I want to be able to upload an annotated screenshot, diagram, or sketch, so that I can express myself visually and enable others to understand complex topics more easily. Then crop/resize, and display the full image in a lightbox on click. These images can now be used to create a grid-view of ideas, which would be a pretty appealing way to browse around and discover new stuff.
* A good home page might handle:
* "+ New Idea" button with UI help text
* Which ideas do I need to know about? (editor-selected)
* Which ideas are most popular? (most upvotes overall)
* Which ideas are fast-risers (most up-votes per unit time)
* What are the most recent ideas in the site? (~5 most recent per category)
* How about a global nav: Ideas | Categories | People?
* Notifications are key to commentary and votes: default to a daily digest of new ideas, and send instant notifications of all votes and comments to the idea-maker and commenters
* Maybe it would help to enable idea-makers categorize or free-tag their own, and perhaps other people's ideas?
* An about page, to make it clear what sort of ideas are welcome, what the policies are, etc.

naught101’s picture

Version: » 6.x-2.x-dev

Similar discussion: http://groups.drupal.org/node/205758

I think this kind of thing works really well If you have a "problems and solutions" set-up, a la ubuntu brainstorm, or stackoverflow, where both the solutions and the problems can be commented on. A single level of ideas seems like it would catch less of the detail available in people's thinking.

Here is an excellent example of how this works well: http://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/1022/what-are-the-most-common-ma...

webchick’s picture

What's the proposed timeline for this to begin development? Would love to use it on Drupal.org or Groups.Drupal.org. :)

ezra-g’s picture

This could be built as early as in the next 2 weeks. Would definitely be great to see on *.d.o!

naught101’s picture

webchick’s picture

I accidentally found http://drupal.org/project/ideation today. Here are some screenshots of the latest 7.x-1.x branch (which removes the openpublic dependency):

Creating an idea (node/add/idea-site):

Idea add form contains fields for current status, categories, and whether or not it's being 'watched'

Statuses are: Current Activity, In Action, No Status, Unable to Implement, Under Review

Categories are: Communication, Improvements, Legislation, Resources, Services #1058506: Make list of categories easily overridable

There's a special "Idea we're watching" flag that only admins can see.

View an idea (node/1):
Idea node contains status and categories, as well as a button to submit an idea and boxes to search.

Obviously, there's some OA/OP styling that leaks through here... #1440572: Remove OA-specific styling

List of ideas (ideas/recent):

List of ideas

Couldn't seem to find a way to vote, though. #1440580: No way to vote on ideas — missing fivestar rating on idea content type

649649649’s picture

subscribe

naught101’s picture

#10 No, don't subscribe. Follow. The big green button up the top. (blue, now that you've commented). Use that.

naught101’s picture

I guess it should also be noted that http://drupal.stackexchange.com already exists. Although the purpose is slightly different, the functionality could be more or less identical

Spark_man’s picture

Webchick where did you find the 7.x-1.x branch that removes the openpublic dependency? The link you provide is just to the project page and 7.x-1.0-beta2 has an openpublic_defaults dependency.

mbrakken’s picture

Spark_man,

Notes on commits for ideation:
http://drupal.org/node/1057670/commits

Most recent one (March 2011) removes dependency on openpublic_defaults, and can be found here: http://drupalcode.org/project/ideation.git/commit/c36087ff20298b0e21fc60... (change to .info)

This is for 7.x-1.0-beta1, while beta2 is the one on the project page. Anyone know if this change applies to 2 as well? Or care to find out?

Spark_man’s picture

Well I didn't think to look at the prievios version - thanks. However I got it working by simply removing the open public defaults references in the .info file and then applying the fix in #1440580. TBH, I'm not wild about the way the code creates the associated blocks on the fly. I would rather have the choice to display and style them myself.

lisarex’s picture

while discussing ideation today, I realized that we are potentially missing a user story or two

* as a user, I can see ideas related to a particular topic in a single list
and/or
* as a group administrator, I can state the issue I would like ideas for (for example, on uservoice, we started with the question "Commons - how do you get started?"
http://commons.uservoice.com/forums/133141-commons-how-do-you-get-started-)

Without these, we would have a lot of random ideas in a single group, that could be very messy/overwhelming!