Landing Pages -- Can TiddlyWiki Learn From Them?

I loathe the practice of opt-in by default (except for things that lockdown by default for the purpose of security). I much prefer opted-out by default, and invited to opt-in.

Just quickly saying, because opt-in by default might be worth a dedicated discussion on an “opt-in by default” case by case basis.

I understand the feeling. Especially with stack-exchange, where every single time I have to reset the settings.

I think we would end up with almost no usable statistics. Only committed TW people would opt-in. Leaving out the most valuable demographic. I guess what I would want is to try it opt-out for say, 3 months, and then look at the stats and see if they are useful. Then drop them and re-instate every year or so. Sort of like the equivalent of a pledge-drive.

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Then them are the breaks.

Get people to opt-in with a carrot of some kind. Even if just a “star” for helping out, with a public display of a user’s number of stars. Can turn into a little bit of a competition to get them stars. (Duolingo does little achievement rewards to encourage folk.)

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All of those projects are … funded in some way where people have full time jobs making the home page.

Yep I’m sure things could be done to make TW — an open source project with one (1) “full time” person on it — more approachable.

If you (or anyone else) would like to design a landing page for TW — go for it!

Want a dedicated space in #projects to have a set of people to work on this? Yes! Go for it!

Will Jeremy accept such a new landing page? Maybe! It’s a process and starts by having some folks volunteer and do some work.

And of course, there are people like @abesamma that are building products around TW — see https://oneplaybook.app/ — which are much more focused landing pages.

As has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I think a group of folks making an Edition — and shaping it with defaults and out of the box settings that they think are good — would be the easiest path, including to not have to replace what is on TW right away.

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Actually, the process should start with Jeremy explaining the purpose of the landing page. Musts and must-nots. Otherwise there’s a big chance people put a lot of effort into creating a fantastic but wrong thing.

tiddlywiki.com serves the needs of several distinct but overlapping groups of users:

  • It is the landing page first encountered by prospective users
  • It is the online demo for prospective users to explore
  • It is the online documentation reference for current users
  • It is the community test bed for quick tests and proof-of-concepts

And perhaps there are more. The point here is that any redesign should not unknowingly make tiddlywiki.com less useful for any of these groups of users.

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@jeremyruston has the idea of moving some of these functions to tiddlywiki.org progressed?

I think everyone wants to address these goals but also improve its appeal to naive visitors. However as tiddlywiki has being used as a reference for sometimes we do not want to invalidate such links.

Yes, I’ve started moving community organisation stuff to tiddlywiki.org, and we already moved links out to links.tiddlywiki.org but I don’t think that any of the use cases I mentioned above are expected to move to tiddlywiki.org

My writing here sometimes serve a “hidden” purpose, which is to discover the whats, what-nots, whos and whys about the community and software. If I propose or oppose something, I’m both giving my feedback about some implementation detail and waiting to see what the response tells me about the community.

This kind of dynamic is much harder in a digital discussion forum, but the purpose is the same as in physical meetings at a company. It’s not just facts and figures, it’s also about who you should be talking to, what’s the general direction of the work, what are the recurring themes, why are they doing this, what do they believe in and so on.

So if I throw out a few crazy ideas, I don’t expect someone else to make them come true. A great answer could maybe be,

  1. Yes, that is a good idea, because it aligns with our values and the current roadmap, that you can find here
  2. Maybe you could cooperate with NN on this, who is already very knowledgeable in the area?
  3. See this link for more information about contributing to the software or community

Or, of course, “No, we don’t want to do that, because X”. Or “Not now, but can you create an issue on Github, so we can revisit this in 6 months?”

Since I don’t hear that, I’m still trying to find out how I can contribute.

I’m giving you feedback as what is missing … which is people picking up some responsibilities and getting stuff done :wink:

From GitHub to home pages, Jeremy could use some self directed volunteers. If you’re interested in taking things on — go for it!

Yes and no :wink: Who is the audience is the starting point for a landing page for sure.

But maybe it doesn’t go on the dotCom home page but rather elsewhere, and we ask Jeremy for a subdomain.

Thanks for digging into this @twMat and kicking off a community project.

@cdaven Hi! How are you? great examples!

I revisited this reply of @cdaven because of @eduardo.caiojoao30’s mention.

What dawned on me is these are “landing pages”, and need not be the whole website.

  • It should be quite easy to provide a way to deliver tiddlywiki in a different layout as a landing page and for selected tiddlers but also return to the standard layout when you navigate elsewhere.
  • That is for the general audience or new visitor they see something akin to a regular website, but it is only a shell.
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Isn’t that the beauty of a website/domain — you can stream the version that’s right for the user?

Deliver firstly from a marketing/beginner perspective, a working example of a very basic wiki, that offers step by step instruction with screenshots etc. using only the default editor toolbar options.

Provide links to a similar enhanced version, that brings in the next level of customisations — the ones that require the user to learn inline HTML/CSS… and then another more advanced version, and so on. Always allowing the option to delve as deeply as you like or need, into your own fully customised wiki.

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Sure, but expecting it to exist without someone making those step by step introductions is wishful thinking.

We do have a huge pile of open issues at GitHub. Many of them are documentation related. But without community help they will not happen.

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I’m not up to speed, but I’d be happy to help with content since I’m already putting together a tutorial wiki for a friend. I saw the list of tasks. LOL oddly enough I have a GitHub account — when I visit that place I feel like a stowaway or imposter. But I did once develop a no frills alternative to Wordpress, it got zero interest.

Failing to mention that the current contribution process is like building a ship in a bottle blind-folded in the middle of a rave. There needs to be a more wiki-like contribution process.

  • I agree with this a lot, even although I was happy to jump into the deep end, I felt forced to far too often.
  • As an IT Professional I also had an advantage, but having a detailed knowledge of “Procedural languages did not help much”.
  • What limitations there are in the documentation and tools available to users cause damage not by Grose damage but by a thousand small, almost trivial, cuts.

In many ways this experience is why I actively support the community and Tiddlywikis evolution, and it gets better every day. If I can make the next persons journey a little easier, I am happy. Never the less TiddlyWiki is a valuable investment in time and effort, as it’s capabilities extend towards infinity in many directions.

  • But how can I express this adequately to a new comer?
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Bingo!

The one or the many?

The infinitude is exactly one big promo issue, I think?

Just early thoughts, TT

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Right. I’m gonna use two visual metaphors that I hope explicate the issue graphically …


1 - Advanced Yoga (TW Developer) … Once you know what you doing you can do this …


2 - Intermediate Yoga (TW Starter) … All learners need to work a bit before you get there …


My point? What is TiddlyWiki for?

I very much doubt most users ever need to master “leg behind the head.”

A comment, TT

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