Introducing the Open Collective Community Project Working Group

[boris]

Welcome to the new Open Collective working group, the second Community Project focus area alongside the Documentation group. This space is for managing, supporting, and promoting the TiddlyWiki Open Collective.

Open Collective is a platform for transparent fundraising and expenses for projects like TiddlyWiki.

It started as an experiment for just TiddlyWiki on Fission, and it is now is being transitioned to being the official TiddlyWiki community fundraising space with @jeremyruston & @saqimtiaz being the administrators alongside myself.

We currently have two core goals listed for donations: covering basic costs for community infrastructure like this Discourse forum, and a new goal for supporting the “TiddlyWiki Core”.

We have more work to do for better descriptions, wording, and explanations, which will very much be the work of this group to help with.

Additionally, the community can make use of the platform for special projects – to pool funds to pay for development, design, or anything else. The File Upload Plugin is the first of these, and we want to welcome others to launch projects here, and this group will be developing some guidelines for that.

Anyone is welcome to post and comment in this category. If you intend to actively be part of the working group, please join the group.

Thank you to everyone who has already made a contribution!

We have some more posts to make, including to highlight a “Call for developers” to work on the File Uploads NodeJS and Git plugins, an update on community infrastructure costs and goals, and more.

The next step will likely be to schedule a live discussion in a couple of weeks with those that are interested. Feel free to post ideas to the group about what might get worked on.

Note: everyone that started donating to the TiddlyWiki on Fission is still donating as a custom contribution! Thank you for your support – you are welcome to cancel it and switch it over to one of the other ones, or just keep making your general donations. Please message the @opencollective group if you have any further questions

[joshuafontany]

@boris Totally in, great introduction. I was wondering what I had been missing on Talk.TW… I may have some clock cycles to work on the File Upload node.js uploader… I have been deep in the server code for the last few months. ;D

[PS12]

@boris

The next step will likely be to schedule a live discussion in a couple of weeks with those that are interested. Feel free to post ideas to the group about what might get worked on.

Can we get an approximation please on when this will take place?

For those of us who have recently found TW, details would be helpful about the new “TiddlyWiki Core”. If backwards compatibility will be broken is it worth migrating old notes and planning future projects with the current TW 5.2?

Also… how can non-developers help ?

[saqimtiaz]

@PS12

For those of us who have recently found TW, details would be helpful about the new “TiddlyWiki Core”. If backwards compatibility will be broken is it worth migrating old notes and planning future projects with the current TW 5.2?

To clarify, @boris is referring to a new funding category on Open Collective for the TiddlyWiki Core. See TiddlyWikiDotOrg - Open Collective

This is not about a new version of the TiddlyWiki core in terms of code. So you can work with current versions of TW without worrying about compatibility.

[PS12]

Thanks for the clarification.

[boris]

@PS12

Also… how can non-developers help ?

The tasks are mostly non developer tasks! What do we engage the community on? How do we explain what donation based funding models might expand? Can we reach out to larger organizations to fund special projects?

[TiddlyTweeter]

@boris

The tasks are mostly non developer tasks! What do we engage the community on? How do we explain what donation based funding models might expand? Can we reach out to larger organizations to fund special projects?

A couple of comments …

1 - On first visit to Discourse these kind of things still seem totally obscure. Don’t we need a one-post overview more clearly upfront on first visit?

2 - IF I give money to something I want a clear picture of how it will be used / distributed. Just FYI, in my own experience targeted campaigns with explicit objectives work better than generic calls for assistance.

Just comments
TT

[boris]

Yep agreed. Would be great if someone wants to write more about this. Also planning to put it on the homepage of TW and point directly to such an overview post here on the forum.

And yes — ideas about targeted campaigns would be welcome!

TT — if you waved your magic wand, what would you want to see created / funded in TW?

[TiddlyTweeter]

@boris

if you waved your magic wand, what would you want to see created / funded in TW?

I’m not the magic wand man. Far better that @Mark_S or @pmario or @saqimtiaz & others hazard that since they understand both end usage and the code behind it.

IF you forced me I’d say what I’d like funding properly via a project would be for a full-on SHOWCASE system.

I would like to see TW more widely used and IMO “showcasing” is central to that. But it needs support to become a more frontline aspect of TW in general. I can spell out what is needed IF there is interest.

Best wishes
TT

[boris]

Hmm.

Again, I want to stress that this is not a “developer” task. End user features is exactly what would be interesting to hear about — how to best implement it is definitely something for core developers.

Showcase is a great example. I think as well as describing it, is the desire to work on it. As an open source community we can work together. So, a write up would be interesting, including what you would see yourself working on, what you need help with, what others can do and so on.

[Mark_S]

What are the fiscal/mechanical details for funding?

It seems like without clicking through and volunteering personal information, I can’t find out anything about how funds are collected (Paypal? private CC processor?) nor what additional fees might be incurred (bank fees, taxes, transaction fees, currency conversion, etc.).

[boris]

You can use anything that the Open Collective platform supports, which right now I believe is Paypal and Credit Cards.

There are transaction fees and host fees. Standard credit processing fees. The money is held in trust by the Host (in this case Fission, there are many Fiscal Hosts on OC), we take care of bank fees and taxes without there needing to be a formal organization or company involved.

Here’s a screenshot of what is publicly visible on any contribution, in this case my own personal one:

https://opencollective.com/tiddlywikidotorg/projects/twitter-archivist

You can click through and find that all out before committing.

[saqimtiaz]

There is also an option for “incognito” contributions that do not publicly list the name of the contributor, see Payments - Open Collective Docs

[boris]

yes, a good point, thank you Saq! You don’t need to be publicly listed on the website, although “Real” details need to be captured on the backend.

[telumire]

@boris

if you waved your magic wand, what would you want to see created / funded in TW?

I know it was addressed to TiddlyTweeter but for me that would undoubtedly be an official multi-user solution (like the BOB plugin).

[boris]

Probably same for me!

There are several “open source Firebase” solutions now that I would look to as a deployable system for the backend.