[Sigia-l] Solving the "web forms problem"?

[Brett Taylor]

Or you could put up the form online with a supported .txt file that the
user could download, type out then re-upload; your system should be able
to parse .txt files.

You should be able to create the form so the user could come back later
to retrieve it.

Seems to me, you'd want to be able to capture the information in a DB so
you can easily reuse, otherwise you will be spending a lot of time
re-typing. 

-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-bounces at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-bounces at asis.org] On
Behalf Of Hanan Cohen
Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 12:26 AM
To: sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: [Sigia-l] Solving the "web forms problem"?

Shalom,

My organization wants to collect affidavits (or testimonies) from
citizens using our website.

The first idea was to download a Word document where people will fill
their text and send back. My reaction to this was that people often are
confused with the process of downloading, remembering where it was,
typing the text and then attaching the document in an Email.

Then it was suggested that we create a web form where people will just
type their text and hit Submit. My reaction to this was that we ask
people to think and be clear in what they write so this writing takes
time and cannot be done in one sitting.

And then I had this idea that I want to ask your reaction to.

- The visitor to our website gives us her email address.

- She immediately gets in her Inbox an HTML formatted letter with the
names of the "fields" she is asked to fill.

- She types her text just as she types in a regular email. 

- She is reminded that she can save this email as draft and come back to
writing it later.

- When she is done, she just hits "reply" and we get what she wrote.

What do you think of this solution?

The only drawback I see here is for us that we cannot automatically
parse the text to a DB.

Any comments or suggestions will be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Hanan Cohen
Shatil - http://shatil.org.il/english
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