"Nah... not for me" - Why?

#26

I agree with that - freedom can be a daunting place as well as an exciting one - tomorrows irritating restrictions are todays comforting guides.

I left the world of software engineering but during that time I hated editors like emacs precisely because I hated the endless configurability I was interested in the software we were writing and not the editor used to write it - others felt very differently.

Ironically I love the configurability of Tiddlywiki

I think it has something to do with the way we view these tools - are they just tools to get the job done and of no interest in themselves or do they take on a life of their own that interests us.

Some people may decide they like spending the time working with Tiddlywiki’s endless possibilities, others may be frightened off by them and some may not be very interested and just resent the extra fluff that seems to get in the way.

You can’t please everyone.

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#27

Yup - my Tiddlywiki content represents thousands of hours of work I would not feel comfortable entrusting it to any propriety format or software.

Sure Microsoft may be around for ‘ever’ but they do kill off products now and then - same with the big G - people can and do get stranded sometimes even when dealing with the big ‘steady’ providers, not to mention hikes in costs or changes in software delivery ( rent vs buy software model ) - ok as far as I know these guys don’t provide Tiddlywiki alternatives - just suggesting that if there are angry MS customers around then what guarantees do we expect from small start-ups providing paid for variations on the Tiddlywiki theme?

I hesitate to go so far as to say that Tiddlywiki users are not even dependent on the continued development of Tiddlywiki because of course in that scenario some change in HTML or JS might eventually cut them off when browser providers decide to withdraw support for the outdated thing so perhaps that its taking it a little far - but all the same I think it’s probably about as safe as you can be given the alternatives, certainly I think if the unthinkable happens to me it will be down to my carelessness and not down some remote corporation - ( backup copies stashed all over the house and online ).

Surely for some new users whether they know it right now or may find out later a sense of security of their invested time on content may become one of the primary concerns, if you are using Tiddlywiki for ten or twenty tiddlers you might care to a moderate level - if later on you end up with thousands you will probably care more than you first did.

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#28

That comment hit me in a powerful way. I went back to GettingStarted.

When I first saw GettingStarted, I thought it was helpful - whittle down the options then read the few that are left. But there are still so many options even after checking both. What to do.

One thing pops into my mind:

Have one tiddler with three options:

a) “I’m new, just let me try my own personal copy online first!”
Which points them to ONE super easy host-and-save-changes online option.

b) “I’m a programmer! Give me the flashy, techy options!”
And point them to node.js and a couple other advanced options.

c) “I want to download a TW file and add a simple extension to my browser for saving changes!”
Which points them say, Timimi as the first option since it seems to be the easiest and works on Chrome and Firefox. And there is a link to see other simple options for other browsers.

d) “I’m a discerning connoisseur! Let me see ALL the options!”
Which points them to something similar to what GettingStarted looks like now.

The value of doing it this way is that the instructions are few and sparse, they divide and conquer, and there are links to more options for those who need it.

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#29

I think a big step up would be to just get an explicit recommendation and it would probably be fine to first tick a few checkboxes (PC vs Mac, private vs work, online or machine, etc) as long as you in the end get a clear recommendation.

Note that a “recommended saver” doesn’t have to solve everything. It is a step to make them go a bit deeper into the TW rabbithole. If they later find that they want something more sophisticated saver then they can change and by then they’ve discovered the power of TW.

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#30

I think thats a good idea, having preset howtos for each archetype of user could give new users ideas for things to try if they arent used to those features or other platforms they used prior did not offer, and could also promote more features tiddlywiki offers, tso birds with one stone!

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#31

Not reading through all posts!

But it is like to advertise for Python language! An end user has little attention to what programming language a designer used to create a tool/product.

I think Tiddlywiki needs to have some editions/apps for end users where the majority of target audiences are there!

You may note Stroll from @DaveGifford has got a lot of intrest from people in Twitter!
Or Grok Tiddlywiki or Zettelksten from @sobjornstad, but Tiddlywiki itself has only near 7k stars in GitHub!

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#34

… I looked at the documentation and the process to collaborate on documentation.

… I looked at Talk.TiddlyWiki

… when I realized that all of the technologies/tools/processes/whatever meant to support TiddlyWiki do not technically support what makes TiddlyWiki so frigging outstanding; we cannot eat our own dog food (either have those support tools built with TiddlyWiki or use support tools that mimick to at least some degree the goodies in TiddlyWiki.

(For example, TiddlyWiki is so frigging awesome to support non-linear thinking. Talk.TiddlyWiki is so frigging awful to support non-linear stuff. (Maybe it is good at non-linear stuff, but I can’t stand Discourse, so zero desire to find out.)

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#35

But we don’t have any statistics or data to show that there is a bottleneck. I think it would be worth putting analytics back in, even if it required the standard cookie warning. Virtually every site I go to has this warning, so it’s no longer a big deal. In fact, sites that don’t ask about cookies may now, ironically, be considered as untrustworthy.

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#36

Ah, interesting. If we do put analytics back in, what specific information would you look for on this matter?

#37

I’d like to echo that. Very good point.

#38

General location. Timestamp. Repeat visits (I know, not always available). Referral site if possible. Then same for downloads if possible. This would allow us to know how many people are visiting from each approximate country, and a conversion factor (how many people download following a visit).

My feeling is that we would find certain regions are being surprisingly under represented.

These numbers would also suggest whether we actually have a problem, a conversion problem (people look but don’t try), or simply a marketing problem. They might even tell us that we’re doing very well – what objective evidence is there that we’re not?

2 Likes
#39

@Mark_S yeah that sure would be interesting.

One thing we could measure more easily is how many community members who have met people “in the wild” who have ever heard of TW. AFAIK, I have never met anyone who has heard of it, not even tech people, and this is in spite of TW having been around for a long time now and it belongs in a very popular “product category”. Contrast this with, say, Evernote which AFAIK is also an independent product in the same product category. If I were to go around and ask who has heard of EverNote I would think quite a few have, and among tech people I’d say it is almost everyone. This anonymity of TW is what I base my impression on, but it is obviously a very, very limited view. Google trends give yet more clues.

Overall, for a project that is about as old as Evernote and Firefox - i.e older than both Chrome and iPhone- i.e stone age old in tech years, and at the same time so fantastic, I think TW is absolutely, and unfortunately, “minimal” for lack of a better word.

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#40

Very subjective. There’s probably a whole world of people that haven’t heard of Github. Evernote advertises. It’s been in the news. It raised 20 million in funding (maybe more now). We can’t really make comparisons with products that have an actual marketing machine.

#41

True. But, tellingly, I can’t think of any non-marketed product to compare it to :wink:

On the other hand, it is partly a choice that TW doesn’t have any marketing - and it is not wholly a matter of funding. If e.g Evernote didn’t have any marketing it might have been in the same situation as TW. Or not.

Does anyone know of any open source, “note taking” (or at least productivity) tool, for individuals, that is 15+ years?

#42

Joplin.

Emacs OrgMode (2003), Zim (at least 2010), SimpleNote (2008, not exactly OS, but actually free)

There’s been a lot of note-taking apps that have disappeared or are mostly defunct: Basket (D2010?), KeyNote (D2015?), Treepad, Tomboy (D2017?), Notational Velocity (D2011?).

Other technologies, include OpenSSL (1998), GPG (1999), Linux (1991), GIMP (1995), Python (1991).

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#43

TiddlyWiki is the bomb. To me, nothing touches it for heavy-duty intertwingling and transclusions.

However, there is a small subset of things (strictly hierachical in nature), no intertwingling and no transclusions needed, for which TreeSheets is the bomb. For those few things, to me, nothing touches it. First came out in 2009. Still maintained. Not quite 15 years, but getting close…

A little non-traditional, but I like VYM (View Your Mind) for note-taking in very odd situations. That mind-mapping tool is pretty good. Been around since 2004,

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#44

35 posts were split to a new topic: Landing Pages – Can TiddlyWiki Learn From Them?

#46

This is a very interesting thread!
I have to think about it. To find a decent way to SAY what some issues may be in a coherent way.

About as far as I got was that the (1) “context of first-engagement” likely matters most; (2) “we lack information” (analytics) to be informed enough to answer basic questions on visit and uptake.

My current two cents,
TT

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#51

I load tiddlywiki.com at least twice a day, sometimes even from different computers, to read the docs, without ever clicking the download button. Too many people like me will skew your statistics… :wink:

Have a nice day
Yaisog

PS: I’m all for creating an awesome “Welcome” tiddler that looks like what people would expect and that shows off the functionality and power of TW when clicking the Edit button (something all the other sites can not, since they’re not written by the respective tool themselves) – this also means that its WikiText cannot be too advanced.

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#52

There was talk of moving doco to the .org that could help with this.

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