New Tiddlywiki Newsletter (Beta/Work-In-Progress)

#1

I’ve posted my first draft of a new Tiddlywiki newsletter. TiddlyWiki Newsletter — A Bi-Weekly Newsletter for the TiddlyWiki Community (tiddlyhost.com)

I wanted to get some content posted first and will be cleaning up the formatting & organization next. I’m still learning about stylesheets and CSS and I’m not sure how long I’ll be spending going down that rabbit hole.

I will be posting new newsletters on the first and third Sundays of the month no-later-than midnight UTC - 5 Eastern USA covering the time in-between.

If anyone has anything they would like to see included that I may have missed in this edition or in the future let me know.

My to-do list for the newsletter includes building documentation on how it’s put together, so any new person who finds it can see and learn from how it’s put together. That’s why I’m keeping the template tiddlers for example visible in the table of contents “Wiki Files” section.

Feedback, comments, etc. appreciated.

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#2

Can I subscribe to this newsletter so that I can get it delivered to my inbox?

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#3

I think you need a new page layout and even a beter theme to indicate this is a newletter!

#4

I agree! I just pushed an update with the centralized river theme and some other small format changes that will hopefully help. I’ll keep working on it.

#5

You can start by collecting useful tips and trcisk from here!

Use Author as tag and lets have an index, you can use kookma plugin index if you like or create one for this newsletter

Use some category tags and stick to them

#6

I appreciate @PaulH’s effort but I thought the newsletter and the content was going to be a collaborative effort, the language used in this thread does not sound like that?

  • It feels to me a little premature to be doing all but private experimenting on a newsletter now because there is so much that can be added. I would build such a newsletter wiki myself so differently. Here is an old an incomplete example I had a long time a go for a blog https://tones-blog.tiddlyhost.com/, which could generate periodical newsletter.
  • For me the content ideas are not the problem, it is the quality and presentation.
#7

@PaulH kindly volunteered for the task and we had a chat over the weekend where he agreed to produce a mockup of the raw data underlying the newsletter. It is definitely a collaborative effort, but just like the core development we still need people to step up and actually do the work.

The important thing first is to establish a model of what we’re trying to do, with a clear editorial style that can then be applied consistently regardless of who is submitting the newsletter items.

The next step is to format it and deliver it as a newsletter, which we’ll do manually initially, but hope to get some automation set up.

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#8

There is an old blog layout from @jeremyruston

code: Jermolene-blog/blog: Source for Jermolene blog (github.com)
demo: Jermolene — learning to program since 1978

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#9

However there was this thread that needs to be taken into account Call for community newsletter & social media support

#10

That’s the thread in which @PaulH volunteered. Is there anything specific in that thread that you are thinking of?

#11

These three themes/layouts might be useful.

  1. ghostwriter
  2. moments
  3. Saq's Sandbox — Experimental doodads

First two are old themes (hence might need some tweaking) and the third one is not packaged as a theme. These are just some suggestions.

I just tried Ghostwriter theme in the demo site and it looks nice and easy to navigate.

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#12

A few people volenteerd including myself so expected to be involved. I expected a team effort.

#13

Apologies I should have communicated more clearly, it’s not my intention to exclude anybody from this process.

As I said in the other thread:

An important point is that the best placed people to take up the editor role may not be the familiar faces who frequently engage in the discussions here.

I reached out to @PaulH to welcome him as a new contributor, and to explore whether he was willing to take on this role.

It is a team effort. Just as with the core, working as a team in open source boils down to individuals doing a little bit of work on their own and then sharing it with the rest of the group for feedback.

As I mentioned above, I believe that doing this role well requires a consistent, carefully thought through editorial approach to ensure that the newsletter meets the needs of the community at large.

I’m not trying to invent something new here: the tech community has a deep culture of weekly newsletters. For example, https://javascriptweekly.com/ is typical. I’ve subscribed to these sort of newsletters in the past and have noticed that the successful ones have a well defined editorial voice. They are not just an aggregate of snippets written and submitted by the community at large (as it happens we already have that in https://talk.tiddlywiki.org).

@PaulH has stepped up and produced an excellent first draft, and offered to take on this editorial role. There are still many important roles for others to fill:

  • Contributing ad hoc suggestions to the editor(s)
  • Becoming a co-editor to help spread the load, if needed
  • Helping get the email list infrastructure up and running, and making it possible to sign up from tiddlywiki.com
  • Helping get the news feed showing up on tiddlywiki.com

And I’m sure more that I haven’t thought of.

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#14

I suggest adding a RSS feed to the wiki, I made a tool for that using Saq’s file upload plugin: Libro — A custom tiddlywiki edition

This add a button you can click to send a rss.xml file to github :

image

It’s discoverable right from the wiki (I’m using feedbro):

image

The feed looks like this:

image
image1262×790 55.2 KB

If you’re interested, let me know if you need help to set that up

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#15

Right!

It needs time to think into the practical’s of that.

Once it is full-working well it would be quite correct to ask about …

  1. – an auto-Emailed version
  2. – an RSS feed version.

Right now I think @PaulH is generously working on a Presentation Format.
That alone is a lot to do to get optimal.

It is all looking very promising!
TT

#16

PRESENTATION: The basic format you have created looks well workable! …

Screenshot 2022-12-06 113302
Screenshot 2022-12-06 1133021292×1584 251 KB

CURATION: What I also think needs to be said, is that you have exercised good critical editorial judgement on WHAT to include. That matters more than anything!

A summary newsletter needs that. I doubt that aspect can ever be automated. It needs skill.

So, kudos all round. Great start!

Just comments, TT

#17

During the time when I was exploring Obsidian, I came across this obsidian roundup website: roundup - Obsidian Roundup It has rss feed and each post is nicely structured into sections (Updates, Plugin News, Showcases, etc). We could use some inspiration from it.

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#18

I was going to comment it. It is important. For example, a newcommers will appreciate that the tips are grouped.

1 Like
#19

@PaulH thanks for working on this.

I just wanted to suggest you may have a good reason to use titles of YYYYMMDD, such as for RSS or Permalinks but it is not very aesthetic, ie not very good looking.

I have a tool that may help in this alt-title-display.json (775 Bytes) just add a more nicely formatted title eg “2nd December 2022 Newsletter” in the alt-title field, perhaps automatically when you are creating the tiddler, an on your wiki the alternative title will be displayed on the tiddler while maintaining the original tiddler title. Consider also setting the caption for lists.

Thanks again

#20

I think it a good choice to establish a universal ordering system.

Your suggestions to @PaulH are useful too for “presentational polish”, helpful suggests.
But I’m not quite clear yet where the final thing will arrive and what would be a good route on displayed date. But I do think Paul’s basic titling idea remains sound.

Just a comment
TT