Links Tiddlywiki: How does it work?

Couple of basic points …

1 - @stobot I VERY much appreciate your ability to consider the naive newbie user. I DO think it is a central issue whether the TW LINKS thing works to better address, often transient (potential), end-user’s concerns/agendas? Does it?

Does it assist them match “my wiki needs” currently, well? That is a question.

2 - Replicating, i.e. pretending to be, a new user, I come across the MESS of “TOPICS” with MULTIPLE REDUNDANCIES (Topics: links.tiddlywiki.com — TiddlyWiki community links). It is way longer than any healthy list should be. IMO, since tags will be a PRIMARY GATEWAY for NAVIGATING INTEREST, I’d guess that making the tags far LESS MESSY would do a lot to improve experience for naive browsers!!

FYI, @stobot, I will write elsewhere more precisely about issue (2).

My MAIN point was merely to wave in your direction for being able to maintain a “simple end-user perspective” in the midst of immense complexity. I think the questions you are asking are invaluable!

Best wishes
TT

Thanks @TiddlyTweeter. I haven’t done much since building the mockup/video due to not knowing where it would go. The conversation after my post seemed to go another direction, but I’m happy to re-engage down the road if there is interest by anyone who has authority to do something with it.

I actually think another platform (maybe even Discourse) would be better suited to replicate the concept I see with other softwares where it’s very easy to see the top plugins / articles by voting with a simple login. But, if the powers that be think the current wiki-scraping system is the best option available, then I wanted to throw out some ideas on how to make it more digestible to the average folk.

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I think that supporting link aggregation in TW is a great goal. If this can be worked on more, from both a design, usage, and creation perspective, I can see the Tools For Thought community really liking this.

It might actually be helpful to have a Bookmarks plugin to make it easier for people?

Moving to a standard format — like JSON or RSS — could also open up using any tools that can produce or ingest that.

Like everything else, it’s going to need people working on it.

Is Jeremy the lead on this? Anyone else working on this?

I’m asking, I feel like it would be helpful to list all community projects and who is working on them, so that people can know who to talk to / how to get involved.

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IMO, Discourse MIGHT become controlled by idiots.
BUT, actually, I think it will do okay for US.
Mainly because “some of US” are in control of IT.

My main concern is it is OBSCURE for newbies.
I think on that it is STILL worse than it was on Google Groups.

Comments, TT

I’ve done everything you see so far.

Apologies for not replying sooner. Also I’m afraid I don’t watch videos, it’s just too time consuming and slow. I looked at the mockup, but I may not be appreciating fully what it is trying to show. I think I’m seeing:

  • A curated list of top categories
  • Tracking of voting/recommendations
  • Possibly other ways of tracking popularity

All good suggestions!

It’s the second and third ones that are tricky: the links system runs on GitHub Pages, and doesn’t have a regular backend, and so there’s no mechanism to keep count of the votes. With @saqimtiaz we’ve been exploring using Google Forms for submissions which may give us a way to track voting.

The advantage of building links.tiddlywiki.com out of TiddlyWiki is that it is just regular TiddlyWiki templates, and so making improvements to it should be approachable for any reasonably experienced TiddlyWiki person.