Let's brainstorm a name for the next version of TiddlyWiki

#123

I would choose to leave the name alone.

It’s not perfect. The cognate with “Tiddlywinks” is strong, unavoidable for English-speakers, and unfortunate. I’m assuming it was intentional and light-hearted, but trying to introduce it to my conservative company does involve some walking on eggshells.

But changing it is a huge headache, and not merely for technical issues such as redirects and SEO. People get used to something like this and grow attached. A name change, especially to something generic and inoffensive will inevitably lead to some user to assume, “Well, they’ve gone corporate. I guess I’m done.” But it won’t by itself attract new users. (However, if we do go this way, I’ll throw in my idea: something to do with “Minnow”. I image the plain name would conflict with some JS library or other tool. But “Minnowiki” might be available. This has the same idea as “tiddlers”, and we could keep that name or change them to “tidbits” as we like. But I won’t argue this further, since I think sticking with Tiddlywiki is better.)

Two stories:

First, around the same time I started using Tiddlywiki, I also introduced an HTML/JS WYSIWYG editor for business users of a project I was on. It was called FCKEditor. Any English speaker will likely see the problem. The founders name was Frederick C Knabben, so the name clearly had to do with his initials, but anyone fluent in English will probably see a relationship with “fuck”, an often offensive English term for sexual intercourse, widely used in curses. A few years later they realized the name was holding them back, and they rebranded as CKEditor.

Second, about a decade later, I founded a JavaScript functional programming (FP) library. “Lambda functions” are an integral part of FP, and I named the library Ramda. For non-English speakers, a “lamb” is a baby sheep; a “ram” is a male adult sheep; a “ewe” is a female adult sheep. Our first iterations was called “Eweda”. “Ramda” then is a name based on a silly pun. We started this library as an educational playground: could we turn these FP ideas into an actual useful library. But through an odd series of coincidences, it has turned into a very popular (10 million+ downloads per week) tool. Even though the name was just a stupid play on words, we’ve kept it and never regretted it. It helps that my co-founder’s wife is a professional illustrator and was able to create a great logo, but there simply was never a good reason to look to change this name.

The difference: Ramda’s name is playful. FCKEditor’s sounded positively offensive to some.

I think Tiddlywiki’s case is much closer to Ramda than to FCKEditor. Yes, “tiddlywink” can have a derogatory tone, but that is a secondary association. I imagine the initial association for most users who have one at all is with the game. That just makes the name light-hearted. For the smaller number of others, I don’t find changing it to appeal to them will offer enough benefit to overcome the hassle.

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#124

On reflection - I now agree.

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#125
  • I imagine TiddlyWiki could threaten the conservative mind set in many more ways than just its name.
  • Although they have now changed to embrace technology, I have worked for Financial institutions such as insurance companies and banks and can imagine them actually fearing something like tiddlywiki.

I am on the side of “leave the TiddlyWiki name alone” (Pink Floyd Song?). Initial impressions of a name is a “passing issue” and is it the “eye catching” and “reliability in search engines” that is much more important, and TiddlyWiki has this big time.

  • Although, as I have said before, no harm in using subtitles and catch phrases along with the “TiddlyWiki platform”.
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#126

For what it’s worth, I agree with Scott_Sauyet.

It’s about understanding how much the current name can be a problem. Reading “How to stimulate User Growth of TW?”, I see that while the name issue is there for some users, while others, like Eric Shulman didn’t find it a problem, there is no consensus.
So we need to understand, is the negative meaning of the name really that common? In which countries is it widespread, and how much (in all English-speaking countries)?

_What I would recommend (if possible) is to do a survey to see how many users recognize negative meanings in the name TiddlyWiki, not so much on the quality of the name (many users may have gotten used to and become attached to the name). And perhaps, ask for a personal opinion from the users of the countries concerned, so as to collect more first-hand information.
Maybe even on this platform. (But as a fairly new user I don’t know if there’s a way to make a survey)

Although not very important I will tell you my perspective, I’m Italian, so the name TiddlyWiki didn’t have any connotation, rather, I found it a pleasant name, which more than anything else evoked lightness. Even when I found out about it, when I searched “Tiddlywinky” I didn’t immediately find what were those derogatory meanings .

(I want to say, anyway, good job telumire for creating this topic: whether the name will change or not, it’s a very important discussion to have)
If a name change were to be made, I would still stay close to the original name (for example, I like the name proposed by ohok, “TidWiki”, it removes any negative meaning while remaining fairly faithful to the original)
Of course, if changing it was easy and didn’t involve a lot of work, I’d change it without hesitation (although I suppose it’s really not an easy thing :sweat_smile:).

Then aside from the ambiguous meaning for some users, we should also see if the name is attractive for new users, (for me it is, but it could improve) so let’s keep brainstorming, maybe a solution that no one expects is just around the corner

1 Like
#127
  • Caution, such surveys could “seed” the idea that the name has a problem, when before the survey it did not.
#128

True, but they can be couched in ways that don’t do that too strongly:

… after some other questions about, say TW usage

  1. Do you find the name “Tiddlywiki”
  • Appealing
  • Pleasant enough, but irrelevant
  • No opinion
  • Slightly strange
  • Annoying

I’m not really recommending this. I don’t think we need a survey or a focus group for this. This is something for Jeremy to decide, with input from the user community.

(I used to own the domain “lietopollsters.org” thinking I might write an anti-polling site. I let it lapse, but am generally not a big fan of polling for such things._

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#129

I did not think about it. That’s true.
There is to evaluate if it’s worth it (I don’t know if it is, I just thought I’d put the idea out there.)

#130

How about a related short name, like TiWi?

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#131

We have the Tiwi Islands near Australia

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#132

TiWi.ki is expensive but free…

#133

I also think the name can be kept. …

My main language is German. One “normative” and well known institution for the German language is duden.de

Searching for: TiddlyWiki, tiddler, tiddly, tiddli, tiddlywinks or toddler do not return any result at all.

For “wiki” we do get the usual suspects. Wiki on its own doesn’t have any negative impact.

I think in the German language the word TiddlyWiki also “sounds good” and it’s easy to speak. IMO that’s an advantage. … At least for me.

The same is true for “tiddler”. It sounds good and is easy to pronounce.

On the other hand: “tidbits” or “tidWiki” are harder to pronounce and the later even is “kind of” broken in German.

Some users wrote, that they use “note” instead of “tiddler”. … That would be perfectly fine for me. Note is translated to “Notiz”, which usually implies to be “short”. A “Notiz” can be a fragment or can make sense on it’s own. …

So I wouldn’t have any problem to “search and replace” tiddler → note in the whole TW docs. We probably would need to fix the grammar for many sentences, but that would probably be-it.

This would let TiddlyWiki be the only “strange” thing for the project name.

If that’s not good enough and Wiki is the main “bummer” just rename it to: “eton” which is Note in reverse.

Since Eton is a place “note-like” may work → EkilEton or short EE may be stupid but cool.

For EE we should be able to come up with something that would make sense in many languages.

just my thoughts
-m

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#134

The issue with tidbit and renaming tiddler to tid, is that the plural equivalence for tiddlers would be “tids”, which for most Spanish speakers/listeners would sound pretty similar to “tits”, and despite we don’t use a the word in English is popular enough in several context to know what it means in English and its translation in Spanish. In several cultures over here we don’t have problems with being mammals and we are not over sexualizining nipples or forbidding pictures of them. But it would cause more that one joke when trying to do workshops or classes regarding the use of tids, while tiddlers has not that problem.

I think that renaming, if happen, would need to think in international context and pronunciations. Something with vowels after consonants that doesn’t facilitate misspronunciation would be a good inclusion criteria, like: Nexo, wikinexo, microwiki, and rizowiki and so alikes.

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#135

@Offray , it doesn’t sound similar. It would be how we don’t differenciate the sound of bit and vid (vine in English)

#136

Are you from Spain? I asume that because it can sound pretty different there, as like happens with sounds of “c”, “s” and “z”, that are pretty distinct when spoken in the Spanish from Spain and sound pretty similar in the Spansh from several other countries in Latin America. Same with “tids” and “tits” ( the final “ts” and “ds” can be pretty indistinguishable for several Spanish variations).

#137

So, is our goal creating just a new title, or a new title and naming scheme for internal elements like “tiddlers”?

Are we looking for something to replace the whole “TiddlyWiki”, or the suffix of “Wiki”, and/or just the prefix of “Tiddly”?

For instance, when I create new Tiddlywiki, I usually use “Tiddly” or “Tiddler” as a prefix for what kind of proj. it is.

For instance, I keep a “TiddlerArchive” of all unused but useful to have tiddlers, stuff like misc. templates, macros, etc.

And my main TiddlyWiki is called a “TiddlerLibrary” where I store all my active and indev projects.

The community does this a good bit too, so picking something that doesn’t really lend itself to that could be a downside, right?

TiddlyWiki.com itself is a Wiki for the software/application called “TiddlyWiki”, so I wasn’t too sure what our aim is as a whole, but I’d like to propose finding a different word to use in place of Tiddly/Tiddler

Side note on the topic of the suffix of wiki, a Wiki is usually defined as a database that is collaboratively worked on, but do we have a word for a database that is only worked on by a indevidual? (Other than, ya know- database…)

#138

The goal is to find a name for an eventual V2 of tiddlywiki, that is a bit less silly while being distinctive, as per the first post of this thread:

Since the term tiddler come from tiddlywiki, changing the name may imply changing the term used for tiddlers, if appropriate.

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#139

Thank you for the clarification, I wanted to make sure to stay on track with everybody. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

After reading through everything, I’d cast my vote on either calling the app “Tiddler” (and the website Tiddler Wiki) which IMO has a more modern look to it, and is mainly just linked to tiddlywiki and would still work with googles analytics witchcraft (and the tiddlers “Tids”) or just calling the app “TidWiki” and the tiddlers “tids” or “tidbits”, which is pretty appealing too.

Just a sidenote, the acronym aspect of Tids is fun to play with, something like “Tiddler/TidWiki Intelligent Document” works nicely.

Edit: an addendum is that if tiddlers were shortened to tids, the fields would be the tidbits, as they are technically the smallest unit of data, a d tiddlers themselves are field lists, 2nd smallest unit of measurement.

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#140

It sounds good and unique in french too, at least for me. So, if it’s not really broken, just don’t fix it, and use your spared work to make the product greater instead.

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#141

You are right. And you are right again. I knew the different pronuntiation of “c” or “z” as “s”, but I didn’t stop to try to know the reason, I think I see it now. They are pretty similar cases (“c/z” as “s”, “d” as “t”, “v” as “b”)

#142

TIDE

Tiddler
Integrated
Development
Environment

Tiddler
Internet
Design
Enhancement

=> TIDEA. ??

TIDES

Tiddlywiki
Internet
Design
Exploration
System

Transclusionary
Interesting
Design
Expansion
System