Ask HN: Can anyone recommend a web-based tool that unlocks simultaneous answers? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Can anyone recommend a web-based tool that unlocks simultaneous answers?

2 pointswwwpatdelcom4 comments

Scenario: Let's say your either starting a club, company, or just meeting someone new and you want to mutually land on a vision statement or aligned set of principles about whatever the goal of that club might be.

One interesting way to go about this would be to maybe have everyone fill out a survey, or write their own little manifesto, and keep the results secret, and then simultaneously reveal everyone's results to everyone else at a pre-determined future date.

The easiest way I can think of to do this would be to just have everyone write a Word/GoogleDoc/Text doc of some kind, and have them literally drag it into a Dropbox/Drive/iCloud folder at the same date and time.

However, I'm wondering if there is a tool out there that would make this more fun, and done in such a way that any individual who just wants to get it done ahead of time can do so, and let the software do the reveal?

Is there any kind of cool, "Simuldrop," tool or method that anyone out there has built or uses? A web-based tool would be cool and have the widest reach, but any suggestions for command-line tools, technical solutions could be interesting as well of course because after all...this is hackernews.

So one idea I have thought of since I wrote this, which is a bit janky:

1. Start a free Dropbox account, create a public upload folder and share said upload link with everyone in the group. 2. Start a throw-away Gmail account, schedule an email containing the username and password to the Dropbox folder to all of the club users for a future date, X weeks in the future. 3. Logout of the dropbox and Google account, throw away the passwords to both.

As long as the email from the throw-away gmail account goes through, then everyone gets the time-capsuled password to Dropbox at the same time and can then log-in to Dropbox at their leisure to view the documents.

Obviously this solution is for a small, very-trusted group and doesn't scale, and has other security problems and the risk of losing everything.

Edit: Also found this, a bit old-school, Windows-based, PC-based solution, not really a modern tool designed to work over the web/internet it seems. https://www.jensscheffler.de/filelocker

There also appears to be a standard way of locking files in bash, which could be used to cobble together a solution where perhaps a file could be maybe scp'd into a server, locked upon upload, and then perhaps the directory unlocked at a pre-determined date for all users, but that seems like it would require a lot of thinking and building and sys-admin manual labor. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1715137/what-is-the-best...

With https://www.mentimeter.com/ you can create polls, surveys, quizzes. Partipants connect with their mobile phones and the presenter can then show everything at the same time on screen. That's a tool school teachers use. https://kahoot.com/schools/how-it-works/ but not sure about surveys. I've used it for a quiz.

* I have played kahoot, it's great...but it's very real-time, e.g. everyone has to be on the call at once from my understanding. I'm thinking of something much more asynchronous...the formation of a club, meaning, members would go and take time to think and search their soul a bit before submitting a much longer set of answers, essay, etc. within a time domain of weeks.

* Mentimeter - seems to be the same type of, "sector," e.g. real-time engagement as opposed to long-term, "time-capsuling" of documents.

Ah ok. I read the question like a brainstorming session, where everybody is really on a call at the same time for example.

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