New users means more developers. About 1000 users will “generates” a develper. So Obsidian’s plugin community is much larger.
Look at TiddlyWiki’s whiteboard and WYSIWYG editor support, there is not recent support. I hope there can be more users, and thus more develpers, thus some of them will write a new whiteboard plugin. Obsidian have at least 4 different whiteboard plugins, maintained by different users.
this would be the supporting facts to which that @linonetwo is pointing, in the absence of evidence per say.
I do think there’s merit to what you observe @Scott_Sauyet, while the argument is valid, it does assume certain premises.
For example, I don’t particularly think the community needs 4 whiteboard apps. Perhaps TW users are more discerning.
Maybe we have a different distribution curve of experience – perhaps we have a certain number of very talented developers which allows for a large pool of non-developers.
Perhaps because Obsidian is “more known,” there is more incentive for people to be “developers,” for reputations sake.
To the other supporting fact referenced, this I would argue is more easily explained by cultural preferences – otherwise I don’t know what speaking English as a primary language would have to do with it.
Tiddly-gittly is a very interesting model, but I have not been an adopter myself, which has nothing to do with how popular it is or is not.
Well, I meant specifically the point of a community gaining one developer for every new 1000 users. It does sound reasonable, but I have no idea where the number came from, and I’m not sure if I would have found it just as reasonable if the number were 100 or 10,000.
I haven’t really thought hard about @linonetwo’s more general point.
I’m in a 1238 users QQ group,
and there were about 6 relatively active JS developers out from here (@linonetwo@oflg@Sttot@oeyoews@WhiteFall@FSpark ) , I remember they were new users when add to the group, and grow to experienced powerful contributors. (Not counting core contributors not in the QQ group.)
While AI makes everybody possible to be developer, but the free-time and some other factors limits most of people, so this is the demography ratio I observed. So It’s right to be “clut” to advertise TiddlyWiki.
And I’m proud to suggest it is better to advertise TidGi App or other edition that is not “Empty edition” and handles save if there are, so 14 day retention rate can be higher (no statistic data, but I remember when it wasn’t prioritized recommended, QQ group retention was very low). And it is opensourced, so everyone can repack TidGi app with other plugin set, and release as free or commercial desktop apps. I have stable income so I don’t rely on opensource to earn money.
Note that I’m not showing off, I only want to rationally persuade you that larger user group is better than in a niche market. Good for users because there will be more developers. Good for developers because there will be more friends playing PVE programming MMO toghther.
I agree, @linonetwo, empty edition can be very difficult for some users to overcome. My partner is interested in using TW, but isn’t savvy enough with web tech to navigate that much empty potential.
On the other hand, I think starting with empty potential is really great for some people – personally, I am so glad that I started that way and have learned a lot from piecing things together from jump.
I do wonder if the community could do a better job with presenting editions, and I think it would be a bump in userbase.
I think the lack of WYSIWYG editor is pretty big. When people want to start taking notes, they don’t wan to learn a wiki syntax with its idiosyncrasies (e.g. in order for code quoted with ``` to be indented under a bullet, you need to add a div, an empty line, and then the quote).
as for TW acting as a DB, this concept is also fundamental to Notion, but there you first define a table with its columns (that are typed) and then you can easily add elements (pages) that comply with its schema, and see them right away. Then you can create views and set filters visually (instead of understanding hos the list widget works).
That’s another great difference between the two! Recently I’ve been poking through the tiddlers of a local Node copy of tiddlywiki.com that I made just to study and analyze and search it with various tools, and I’m coming to the realization that this text-based data representation is way easier to use in web development than structured Markdown folders. Lot’s of people have been inspired by Obsidian’s model and want to use it to deploy websites with alternative, free build systems–but TiddlyWiki may be better for many of those use cases.
I don’t hate Obsidian or Markdown either–I intend to use them more while still also using TiddlyWiki. But TiddlyWiki is definitely the more powerful of the two!
Those are pre-build into TidGI app, so I always recommend TidGi, so no new users will say: “lack of xxx” like:
WYSIWYG editor
multi-column
whiteboard
auto save and auto backup
jump back to previous tiddler
I think tw should even not providing empty edition on official website for new users, but instead only provide it as a developer tool, like Linux core is not for new users seeking for Ubuntu. Geeks may say they grow up with Linux core or empty edition, but that is only about themselves, not concern for new users.
Just discovered this feature—it looks awesome! Also, I think keeping the option to choose is still necessary. The way the Neovim community handles it is pretty great. After all, there’s always a few geeks among the new users lol.
I strongly disagree. Perhaps the Chinese market is different, but I suspect that one reason many users do choose TW over its competitors is that it’s lightweight and doesn’t make assumptions about how you should be using it.
As a new user, I wasn’t looking for WYSIWYG, multi-column, or whiteboard plugins. I chose TW over Obsidian and other similar programs because I wanted to build my ideal setup, not make do with someone else’s. (In fact, the number of features I don’t need that come built into TidGi have discouraged me from ever trying it out. I already have 50+ plugins I do use; I don’t need more!)
As an experienced user, I find myself downloading empty.html on a semi-regular basis. I wouldn’t want it to be exiled to https://tiddlywiki.com/dev/.
I agree with Emily here. I think there is a strong rationale for offering multiple editions alongside Empty, targeted to specific desires. (And I’ve fallen down in my volunteer duties to work on a Recipe edition. Some day!) But these should not be in place of the empty edition.
I keep saying I will check out TidGi, but it never gets to the top of my list. That list of features makes me much less likely to check it out. I don’t want a WYSIWYG editor. I’ve very rarely wanted multi-columns; if I do, I’d seek it out. A whiteboard might have come in handy once or twice, but I certainly don’t want to burden my remaining wikis with one. I have auto-save in my usual Node configuration; I might appreciate auto-backup as well, although git commit serves fairly well for this need. I don’t usually want a jump back to previous tiddler behavior, but if I do, I toggle the URL fragment and history behaviors to get that.
I do have my own list of almost universal tweaks I make to my own wikis:
Faster animation duration (250ms)
Always open new tiddlers at the top
Include a Table of Contents as the first and default Sidebar tab
fluid-fixed
Show the more and home page control buttons
Show the permalink view button
U.S.-style dates
Show the caption (if it exists) as the View title
Change various view metrics
…many more
Should all of these tweaks be in your TidGi edition? Why not? I use them in nearly every wiki.
The reason is clear: these are Scott’s personal tweaks. They are configured for the kinds of wikis Scott builds. While I think it makes for a nice wiki, I’m sure others would find it horrible. So while I would appreciate having a curated list of many useful and distinct editions to start from, I think the empty edition should always be prominent among them.
I totally understand what experienced user feel, as I’m also a long term Tiddlywiki user and developer. But I’d say this is Curse of knowledge. When building product, we need to think as a Notion / Obsidian user, or a college student, rather than a experienced personal wiki user.
So I should clearify that my opinions are for new users, I’m not building things for most of existing users, but rather aimed for gathering more new users for TW community.
I talk about this, because at 2016 we some PKM lovers already talked about Tiddlywiki, but this drives me away, and use Notion instead for several years.
I assumed this was the case. What I’d intended to point out and should have made clearer is that the official site is currently a resource for existing users just as much as it is a marketing tool aimed at new users. In fact, if I I’ve visited tiddlywiki.com 1000 times (and that seems like a conservative estimate!), 999 of those visits were after I’d started using it. So — even setting new users aside for a moment — I don’t believe it serves our existing community to hide the empty edition elsewhere.
Personally, I’d never used a wiki or PKMS prior to adopting TiddlyWiki. When I decided I wanted to find a better place to keep my notes than “several dozen unsorted Google Docs”, I looked at the available options, including Obsidian and Notion, and ultimately dismissed them because they didn’t appear to have the flexibility I wanted. On the other hand, I saw the diverse range of TW wikis showcased around the web, and that gave me hope that I could build my own ideal tool, too.
I do want to emphasize that I found the mainstream options like Obsidian first — and I suspect that this is typical, at least on the English-speaking side of the internet, as you’ll find far more buzz and word-of-mouth and Youtube videos, etc. about the newer, trendier programs. Someone looking for a new PKM system is nearly guaranteed to find Obsidian or Notion long before they ever hear of TiddlyWiki… and if they’re satisfied with what they see, they have no reason to look for alternatives. I think this is especially true for those without much prior experience with PKMS; they’re likely to choose the first “good enough” option they encounter.
On the other hand, I suspect we may have more success converting PKM veterans with highly specific needs — people who’ve tried the mainstream options and found them lacking. I think it’s important to continue to offer and even promote the most bare-bones version of TiddlyWiki to exactly this group of people: potential users with a good idea of what they want (or don’t want), who may be turned off by a program that makes too many assumptions about their needs.
Yes, I spent many years trying to make other systems work and becoming frustrated hitting a wall of inflexibility with each of them.
Tiddlywiki was the first tool I found which really felt as if it had the flexibility required for any situation. Frankly, it’s so flexible that I’m regularly shocked by what other users realize they can do with it.
Being “open source” is a nice bonus - - but really what we are talking about is the flexibility that other tools just don’t have. And, unfortunately, some of that flexibility is what can make it intimidating for new users.
Sometimes I wonder if Tiddlywiki just had better first time user content if we’d be able to overcome that.
No criticism intended of what already exists out there – one who lives in glass houses and whatnot, those who don’t make should not criticize – but I remember being a new user and watching some of the series of “How to Tiddlywiki” videos and not even really understanding the TOC until I’d toyed around with it a bit.
