Fle4

Knowledge Building is a process of collaboratively building new understanding and knowledge through meaningful discussion. This plugin allows knowledge building processes to happen on Wordpress comments. There are several different knowledge typesets to choose from, and they can be mapped to individual post categories, so other posts will continue to use their normal commenting functionality, while some categories will be equipped with knowledge building tools.

Installation

Install the plugin as you normally would, into its own folder inside wp-content/plugins. Go to WP admin, and enable the Knowledge Building plugin. After this, go to Settings, and open the new settings page “Knowledge Building”. There you can select which knowledge typeset to use with which post category. By default, no typesets are used.

Finally, you need to edit your template to so that the knowledge building tools are visible. Go to Theme editing, and edit the comments.php template. Find the call to “wp_list_comments” and replace that with “knbu_list_comments”. And you’re done!

Well, actually if you use something other than the default theme, there may not be a call to “wp_list_comments”. Then you need to figure out what part of comments.php is responsible for generating the comments, and replacing it with a call to “knbu_list_comments”. It may take a few tries to get it right. But once you start seeing different background colors on the comments, based on their knowledge type, you’ve succeeded.

Also check out David Groos’s instructions on setting up Fle4 and working with themes, multiuser setups, etc.

Examples

You can see knowledge building in action by looking at the comments for the post Demonstration of Knowledge Building. That post uses the Progressive Inquiry KB typeset. You can also look at Six Hat Thinking in the post Try out Six Hat Thinking.

Downloading

This plugin is hosted in the Wordpress Plugin Directory.

License

The knowledge building plugin for Wordpress is licensed under GPL 2 license. This means that you are free to use this software for any purpose, and to modify it as necessary. In case you will publish your modified version of the plugin, you will need to also release the source code under the same license.

Updates

• Version 0.5.5 was released in April 2011. It fixes a compatibility problem with Wordpress 3.1.1. Also works in older Wordpress versions.
• Version 0.5.4 was released in July 2010. It merely has been checked to work with Wordpress 3.0, no changes in functionality.
• Version 0.5.3 was released in December 2009.
• Version 0.2 was the first release in September 2009.