Hello,
I have a degree in computer science and I was looking for a wiki for my hobby project, a Master of Magic clone. I would like to create a wiki in the style of masterofmagic.wikia.com. Obsidian and Notion weren’t right for me. But I found TiddlyWiki and would like to share my experience and suggestions here.
IMO for the vast majority of potential users, usability should be the top priority.
With text files, you work with headings and paragraphs, but TiddlyWiki is so much more.
TiddlyWiki thrives on create, sort, and link.
So, in addition to the content, a user must first deal with the structure of the wiki.
The user therefore first needs a visual representation of the structure and how its parts interact.
The first hurdle is thus the documentation, which, even with GrokTiddlyWiki, is extensive but also very confusing.
I find the current documentation too unstructuredand detailed for this purpose, and the user has to read almost everything to find the elements they need for their project. In my opinion, GrokTiddlyWiki also takes the wrong approach here, because it immediately gets lost in the details of the building blocks without first conveying the big picture.
IMO the modern approach is to first provide an overview of all structural elements and use a diagram to explain how they interact and the optimal procedure.
Using my project as an example, this would be:
- Think about a tag structure: races, items, etc.
- Create your data tiddlers: JSON for a race’s character stats; text tiddlers with sections describing, for example, appearance, culture, or abilities; graphics as links in separate tiddlers
- Build macros, widgets, and procedures
- Build a template using translucents, macros, widgets, and procedures
- Now create your races using a tiddler that references the template, uses the tiddler’s name for generation, and which you clone repeatedly.
A simple diagram with rectangles for tiddlers and showing their interactions with arrows conveys this concept at a glance. This is one example, that the documentation needs more graphics. Visual presentation of information is very helpful for beginners and breaks up long blocks of text.
Here are a few more operational concepts: There are no user roles; the Save button also serves as the backup; versioning must be handled externally using Git or similar systems (why, exactly?). Easy to explain, but different to find in the current documentation.
Once the user has grasped the concept of TiddlyWiki, they quickly realize they need more tools.
No problem, TiddlyWiki is blessed with a highly productive community that creates thousands of plugins. But this jungle should be organized clearly by category on a dedicated plugins page and include links to the respective source URLs.
TiddlyWiki cannot handle basic data structures like dynamic tables and graphs out of the box. It doesn’t need to, but these plugins should therefore be centrally linked and recommended.
I consider sidebar resizer, backlinks and the ability to view all tiddlers not currently in use within the wiki to be important features. The same goes for relink and quickview. What about an index of all widgets, macros, procedures, functions, and CSS elements? Unfortunately, there isn’t one (or I can’t find it).
Yes, you can program it, but we’re talking about beginners and regular users who just want to get started and explore the more advanced features later.
It would also be nice if you could let tiddlers “fly” (there used to be a plugin for that) or run multiple stories side by side. The latter greatly expands tiddler’s capabilities because it allows you to read, compare, and edit simultaneously. But this should be a built-in feature so that plugins have to account for it - some users don’t like that.
Then I miss a structural editor more than a WYSIWYG editor.
Because in the end, I have a list of many very different tiddlers with content, code, config and controls.
Some tiddlers display the information as a page, others contain only basic information, and still others contain code or configuration data. A plugin installed nice graphics - those are now appear in my wiki as tiddlers and making it hard to keep track of everything : -(
So I have to reorganize my tiddlers: 13 tiddlers with information and one that’s just for presenting it as my elves. With 30 tiddlers per fantasy race, that’s 260 tiddlers!
You can organize with tags, but to get an overview first, I’d like an structual editor like a Kanban board:
You can see all Tiddlers with specific tags and interactively assign them to other tags using drag-and-drop.
Next questions for beginners: How do I create a structure of tiddlers that should be opened simultaneously so that I get a readable page of contexts? How can I turn TiddlyWiki into a static website (ha, they are forgotten conceptual questions from the beginning)?
Sometimes it feels like I’m in a library: thousands of small elements, but where are they, what are they, where are they used, and which key elements (widgets, styles, etc.) do I have?
If you don’t use it every day, it’s hard to find your way around again.
I’ll stick with TiddlyWiki, but it’s certainly a rocky road.
I hope I’ve offered a few insights from the perspective of a beginner and user who, although a senior IT expert, sometimes just wants to organize his thoughts and projects.
), Philosophy & Concept (with a visualization)
Now I’m using git under Linux.