Idea: Showcase plugin

#1

In the GG I requested ideas for how to make TW’s feel more “alive”. The background for this is that I think it could make sense to create a Showcase plugin. The idea is up for grabs!

Problem
TW-curious people probably don’t easily see how TW is relevant for their particular needs because it is not easy to find real world examples that feel relevant. (“This tiddlewiddle stuff seems like an interesting, albeit odd, tool for taking notes… but it is obviously not a tool for anthropology !”)

Solution
Imagine if we could provide a wide array of showcases, based on tiddlywikians real TWs! Every TW user is an expert at his or her own use case - be it an “anthropologist”, “food-shopping-list-maker”, “game-of-throner” or whatever people use TW for. And visitors with that interest would probably benefit for such a showcase.

Pipe dream? Well, what is keeping you from sharing your wikis? If I look at my own wikis they contain private data and they have settings and quirks that probably only make sense to me. Besides, where would it be published for public view? And wikis risk decaying over time and appear outdated, making the effort to create them feel less meaningful.

IMO, sharing a wiki should be a simple one-time effort. For this, I propose a showcase plugin as support. The workflow would require the contributor to:

  1. make a copy of the wiki and clean out sensitive data
  2. install the plugin that provides settings to make the wiki appealing for visitors
  3. publish it

The publishing issue is beyond the scope of this thread. Here I focus on the “Showcase plugin” - I envision a plugin where the main feature is a dashboard tiddler toggles for settings like:

  • Hide certain buttons e.g the “edit tiddler”, “new tiddler”, etc.
  • Hide the subtitle viewtemplate (to hide outdated dates and author)
  • Activate an “About” tiddler, perhaps injected before the default tiddlers or as AboveStory. It could contain a modifiable stock text such as “This TiddlyWiki is built for . It features …” etc. Opportunity for the contributor to put his name on the demo. Could also have a Download button. And perhaps a link to thread discussing the demo.
  • Shortcut links/buttons to a few of the standard color schemes (…or, for creating a more living feeling, a toggle for a special background color included in the plugin, that really is a subtle gradient, e.g “blue sky”, so scrolling gives a more active feeling.)
  • Toggle for something like stamper (stamping “demo” or “variant 2” or whatever)
  • It could also feature “visual pointers” to steer attention on screen and perhaps give info about things. (I have some vague ideas how to implement small arrows in pure CSS, that can be attached to elements on the page. Should be useful.)

…more?

Maybe the plugin could also include dummy content tiddlers? Not sure exactly what, but we could develop a standard set so that people wanting to showcase a wiki don’t have to create these in case their original content had to be cleansed out. For example, a set of tiddlers with peoples names, a few images, a few data tiddlers, etc. (Didn’t Excel have something like this or was it that MS database software?)

#2

Ciao @twMat. This is a great thread! My naïve concern is simply WHY would a new user searching for a solution to their issues want a Showcase Plugin? That would involve them in having to install TW and a plugin. That is hardly easy or sensible until you know TW is for you. Chicken or egg?

Would it not be better and easier to simply have a richer Public TW Showcase?

I may be misunderstanding your intent! That actually you meant that any wiki would Showcase many other wikis.

At root I’m trying to understand the logic of what a new potential user sees first?

Thoughts
TT

#3

Hm, I must clearly rephrase something. What I mean is that the tiddlywikian who wants to share his wiki is the one who does this. The tiddlywikian is both a tiddly user and a topic expert - be it in “anthropology”, “spreadsheet”, “shoppinglist”, “x-ray administration”, “game of thrones” - whatever TW is used for. Not even Jeremy could create a good “anthropology TW” even if he wanted to (OK, I’m obviously just guessing) but so to get good showcases, we must rely on experts among us, i.e the community because it consists of people who are experts in their own domains and needs.

Edit: OK, I’ve rephrased some stuff now.

#4

Thanks @twMat. You clarified well it is a about an author having an easier way to Showcase their work. Yes?

#5

Right! We are totally dependent on the community to provide showcases (because it takes expertise) but for anyone to bother it must be simple. People are evidently very willing to share stuff like plugins and other creations, that take a LOT of effort to create, so the almost total lack of shared showcases is clearly a systemic problem.

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#6

I have a pretty different idea that’s simpler and faster, which would also be similarly helpful to new users: have a TiddlyWiki “sandbox” or demonstration that can be used in browser on the main site via one click.

The number one problem I had as a brand new user a couple months ago was that there was a “cliff” in the learning curve (actually several.) The first cliff is understanding what TW is and how to use it on desktop. I felt like I had to learn the following before I even started using TW:

  1. Does TW match the framework for my workflow? (No way to know until you try it.)
  2. Does it have any catastrophic problems that would prevent it form being in my workflow, i.e. does it play nice with other software I need? (Again, no way to know until you try it.)
  3. How do I use it in practice? (Have to actually try it.)
  4. How do I save my work? Can I trust the save process to not dump or corrupt my work?

This may sound weird, but as a distrustful new user, I really was hesitant to download empty.html because I’m so used to downloading things-that-act-like-programs being a high-risk transaction. Also, I felt that there was way too much to try to know at the beginning.

While looking at @Mohammad 's Refnotes webpage, I noticed that he left up many of the controls for using TW, and I could just go ahead and play around with making new tiddlers, experimenting with his plugin, and so on entirely in my browser without fooling around with downloading or anything that feels similarly risky. I think having something like this on the main website, accessible with one click (like a “Try Now! in Your Browser with No Risk or Commitment” button, and they can save their work in the browser downloads folder) would be extremely helpful for brand-new users thinking about using TW. That’s a very small first step, but it answers a lot of questions and gets them a first file they’re already familiar with. Then, the next step would be figuring our how to open and save more conveniently on desktop (with TiddlyDesktop or whatever), then figuring out what plugins they need, then practicing their workflow, and then customizing the CSS, etc.

Answering the actual question:

“…what is keeping you from sharing your wikis?”

  1. Lots and lots of material I don’t have the rights to redistribute… :sweat_smile:
  2. Nothing is in publication-quality, everything is constantly under construction, so my TW looks petty terrible right now.
  3. I don’t know how, and have very limited time and similarly little interest to learn.
  4. The workflow and framework are more important to me when making a use decision than seeing someone else’s sexy TW. I feel the TW is like a bridge between material being consumed and whatever output users are producing, so I’m somewhat disinterested in bridges to nowhere, even if the bridge is very pretty and slick.

I like the dummy content tiddler idea best. I really feel we’re missing the boat on marketing TW if we’re not talking about how to share tiddlers. dragging and dropping notes like this would be an absolute boon for college students and academics. If each tiddler was designed and tested to work on an unmodified TW and we had a place to upload or publish solo tiddlers, instead of a whole wiki, I think users would come up with and share really interesting ideas and demonstrations that aren’t as time-consuming and ambitious as a full wiki.

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#7

I think you’re saying — make it easier to make an Edition.

Totally possible, would need some work thinking about the tech stack and promoting it and so on.

Do you want to take this on as a community project? What else do you need?

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#8

Yes, that’d be great. But it would serve a somewhat different purpose. IMO it would be valuable with a wide range of showcases featuring different contexts where TW is used. Even if there’s a sandbox and people can try TW it still takes some imagination to see that it can be well used for “birdwatching” or “wine collecting”. Someone elses TW creation might not match my intended workflow… but then, few dedicated turnkey softwares do, but they cannot be remodelled like TW. Besides, multiple showcases, even if they’re not specifically about ones primary topic of interest, should be interesting to peek at because there are unproportionally few around.

I suggest you start a new thread so your idea can be discussed and developed upon. I’m beginning to wonder if the gh discussion forum might even be a better place for more focussed discussion.

As for your personal points as to why my idea is not for you; fair enough, it is not for you :wink:

#9

That’s an interesting way to look at it. In my mind an “edition” (which, incidentally, I don’t like the name for - I’d rather call editions applications) is something that people expect to download and use. I.e it is something very polished. I would rather see a wide plethora of real use cases with only minor polishing, instead of very few “editions” that are perfect. It is evident that people do not easily crank out “editions” (there are only a handful of them!) so IMO we either need to either lower the bar dramatically or simply activate another category, i.e Showcases, that it is substantially easier to contribute to. A main point is to tap into the expertise that is reflected in real use wikis. I believe this is of value to both visitors and established tiddlywikians.

Do you want to take this on as a community project? What else do you need?

You mean the proposed “showcase plugin”? Yeah, I’m afraid I just don’t have the time to do this right now. One aspect with it that would make it suitable for a “community project” would be that the proposed features (the “toggles”) are very distinct and could be developed by different people.

#10

I think that by making Editions easier to create, then the “has to be polished” expectation goes down. Historically within the TW community they have been hard to create (well, still are) and thus those that do release them tend to have a high bar.

In other communities they are also called Distributions or Distros.

I don’t mind what they are called and don’t necessarily think Editions are a bad name. We agree that having many more of them would be a great outcome.

Mostly I am encouraging people to find collaborators and work on stuff. Not a slight against you or anyone else, just trying to see if we can get more things moved from idea to implementation by forming small groups.

Maybe even a “looking for collaborators” tag or thread? Not sure.

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