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Before start, shot quotes form wikipedia
[quote='Wikipedia']
Brainstorming is a group creativity technique designed to generate a large number of ideas for the solution of a problem
[..] ...and improving team work...

Ground Rules

1. Focus on quantity
2. Withhold criticism
3. Welcome unusual ideas
4. Combine and improve ideas

Create a list of lead questions like

1. Can we combine these ideas?
2. How about looking from another perspective?

[/quote]

Whole article about Brainstorming is here
Please read it before continuing discussion.
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With all the respect, current forum-based platform for brainstorming ins not the best solution

[size=large]So the problems we are facing[/size]


It's easy to get lost

Even that we have duplicates subforum proves, that users are getting lost

The key part of brainstorming are QUANTITY of the ideas. This means, that for 1 problem we SHOULD have 8-108+ ideas (now not talking about quality of them)
This means, that if we have just 100 problems, this will lead to at least 1000 separate idea threads, even with tagging system or help from google it still would be not an easy task to deal with (alone).

Example:
http://forum.kde.org/better-use-middle- ... 60425.html If we had a problem like "Improve folders navigation experience" this duplication could never exist.


Ideas are forced to fight against each other

In many cases ye post new treads even if you idea is just updated version of other idea. I think, if update "rational" and have an agreement with original author, we should update main idea, instead of creating new one. Only then we cant find agreement, we should start new thread.

Also we loose the real importance of the problem measured by votes
Lets say we have 1 problem and 10 ideas how to solve it. Lets say this could lead to 10 treads voted between 2-20. In total ~100votes for the problem. But since all these ideas are separate, whole problem will lose against any problem with low number of ideas.
The more important problem -> the more ideas -> the lower votes for each one idea -> Problem doesn't get enough attention.

Also 2, some problems could be solved by only complex solutions, keeping ideas separate, we usually loose an opportunity to match them for best results

I hope you got the point.


Hard to orientate, low teem spirit

In very rare cases tread starter keeps updating first post of the idea to match enhancements suggested during discussion. New users for specific problem just cant read all the posts. They usually read just first and last, especially if there are numbers of pages or many posts just for clarification.

This also affects teem spirit - good suggestions could be easily lost between the lines. Even more, its hard to join discussion. You have to read everything leading to 2-10ideas /hour in best cases.

I thing first idea should be an outline of whole following tread.


Solutions gets above problems

Brainstorm is a tool to find solutions for a problems. Not to find solutions for the problems that doesn't exits. If you cant think, why this should be implemented, you should post. In some cases we even create a problem just to get some solution implemented. Its wrong way to do things.



Great example is
http://forum.kde.org/dolphin-ideas-with ... 28472.html
This could be just a few core problems, like "Dolphin: better search bar" etc. with many extending ideas how to achieve this.



Last question what are the difference between idea and a problem

Problem - a puzzle or question set for solving
Idea - a way to solve problem.

The problem itself could be an app itself, like KickOff plasmoid, or could be part of app, like "PIM: Organizing mails"
Also could a more generic - "Downloading files and organizing them" with some ideas and many pointers to other ideas/ problems to avoid duplication of human work.

Even if there could be just one solution, this idea should get under problem. Just make things clearer

p.s. I'll post one of possible solutions soon

It's easy to get lost

Even that we have duplicates subforum proves, that users are getting lost

The key part of brainstorming are QUANTITY of the ideas. This means, that for 1 problem we SHOULD have 8-108+ ideas (now not talking about quality of them)
This means, that if we have just 100 problems, this will lead to at least 1000 separate idea threads, even with tagging system or help from google it still would be not an easy task to deal with.

I would like to see if tagging makes it better. It would be a bit incorrect to assume that tagging would be useless.

In many cases ye post new treads even if you idea is just updated version of other idea. I think, if update "rational" and have an agreement with original author, we should update main idea, instead of creating new one. Only then we cant find agreement, we should start new thread.

It would be the responsibility of the idea poster (read FAQs) to search before posting. The moderator team cannot do much, except for tagging them as duplicates.

The brainstorm section is very new. We should give it a bit more time. I agree that the structure should ideally be "many solutions to one problem". But to implement that, we need a complete rewrite, which we might not be doing at this moment.

TheBlackCat wrote:That is not how brainstorm works, as I understand it. There is no single "overhaul the file associations module" thread, for instance. Each specific, independent idea for that file associations module should have its own thread, so users can discuss and vote on each idea independently. The final goal is to figure out which ones are considered the best by forum members and then submit those ideas to developers. We can't do that if a bunch of different ideas are all intermingled in a single thread.

Although if I am wrong, another moderator please correct me.

You are mostly right, but, thats just my personal opinion, result of brainstorm should be a more or less final solution for developers for a single problem. I developers would be forced to read every and any idea on this forum related to that problem, they would spend more time reading, than coding.

Another problem, is that ideas are quite low voted in this forum so far. To get a better results, we must to put clean solutions.

Forum is here not just for nice buttons. We have interesting discussions here. And mostly the ideas changes during them. If we just could put a "clean" and well discussed ideas to wild masses, results, i hope would change.

But there are another problem. All ides offers impoverishments. Find a user who thinks, that his system doesn't need an improvement. Also Only limited ideas cold be in top of results. This makes voting too random.

A better way would be to put 2++ possible solutions, so users would vote for and against one of them. So developers would know which way is more liked by users (like 23% : 77%)