Talk.TiddlyWiki "Not Made for Me"

[Charlie_Veniot]

I guess I felt inspired by “Nah… not for me”.

Although I entirely understand why the great majority flocked to Talk.TiddlyWiki with joy, I have never been happy with it. I suffer it because of the need to connect with people, but it drives me entirely up the wall.

Do bear in mind, I have a cognitive disability made worse by physical health issues (thankfully no pain, but distracting discomfort all day long), causing me to easily get distracted and confused, sometimes not process correctly what I read, have a devil of a time to put into words the intertwingled mess of stuff in my head, and easily get re-traumatized because of some kind of PTSD caused by new management and elimination of accommodations that kept me very functional in that job for the previous 22 years.

All of that just to point out that my needs wide-ranging and often pretty funky. Just about everything a majority of community members (the normally functioning brains) find outstanding in a community forum those are the things that make me dysfunctional. So I’m not doing this with any kinds of expectations

EDIT: The following no longer applies. I’ve deleted the form and the related published data. What I was trying to contribute here as a form of prototype isn’t wanted, so no sense pursuing it

I’m just throwing this out there in case it is of any use to anybody, a publicly published spreadsheet filled via a Google Form, and it is open for anybody who wants to add their individual things that make Talk.TiddlyWiki “Not Made for You as Much as You Would Like?” thoughts.

The published list of submitted entries.

The Form.

[mwiktowy]

Maybe the Minima theme could be added as an option.

Minima, a minimal theme for Discourse

The Sam’s Simple Theme option that now exists besides the default doesn’t seem to do much … but maybe that is because it is the default.

[twMat]

Just curious; In what way was/is GG better with respect to linear/non-linear discussion? With that said, I am also frustrated by how even very specific questions can go totally off the rails almost immediately.

[Charlie_Veniot]

Three things Google Groups does that help immensely:

• when viewing a thread of conversation, the OP and subsequent replies (to OP or replies to replies) are collapsed/folded after being viewed; this better allows seeing a bird’s eye view/summary of the discussion; if Talk.TiddlyWiki offers that, I’ve been too frustrated with other interface things to notice (the list is long and messy and overwhelming to sort out); I guess this is about being able to see as much of all the things possbile, with drill-down for details;

• when viewing a reply to anything earlier on, there are three dots I can click on to see how we got from the OP to the reply I am looking at, so I get the full context of a rabbit hole that may have diverged from the OP or other branches in the discussion

• Talk.TiddlyWiki (Discourse) is made for touchscreen devices (screens smaller than desktops), which is great for that, but lousy for me because the amount of scrolling involved drives me bonkers; Google Groups is made for desktops, and takes advantage of the screen size to minimize (there is not eliminating it) scrolling;

The details of how all that relates to cognitive challenges/help, no sense getting into that.

But for the three bullet points above, screenshots that hopefully help contextually:

The “folded” OP and replies:

The three dots I can click on to see the full thread of messages that brought us to this reply:

Making use of the entire screen to minimize vertical scrolling:

[Charlie_Veniot]

Yes, I much prefer Google Groups for the things it helps me with.

But the Team Developer SQLWindows Community Forum has always been the one that works best for me overall.

[TW_Tones]

Each to their own, and I appreciate your viewpoint. Having implemented and used a wide range of forums, as a user and manager, I can think of hundreds of ways Discourse and other forums are better, but I have already put many of these arguments in the past.

Not withstanding this I think you may be able take you concerns to the Meta category and ask if discourse can be modified to address these limitations you see.

Responding to your above points;

• I agree being able to collapse and expand would be great.
• There is a facility to follow back to the place where a reply was originated in the Top Right hand of any reply, but only if they did not hit reply at the bottom of the thread, or on the first post.
  • Perhaps we need to encourage this more?
  • See below
• Your say “made for touch” but I use it on both but especially desktop and do like it there.
  • I agree it could make better use of widescreens but I would not be surprised if there are options that can be set there as well. What would you prefer stretched out across the horizontal?

I genuinely want us to make discourse better for you even although I have different needs.

Here I replied directly to a reply of Mohammad’s

Then clicking on Mohammad it expands like this;

• Which lets you view the exact item I was replying to without scrolling back.

Regards
Tony

[Mario]

@Charlie_Veniot

But for the three bullet points above, screenshots that hopefully help contextually:

The “folded” OP and replies:

I think, that’s a good suggestion, I’ll ask at the Discourse forum, if and how this could be implemented.

In the meantime you could have a look at this theme: Discourse Theme Creator …

The Discourse theme demo site will show a modal … Click View Theme

What do you think about that one?

[Mario]

@Mario

What do you think about that one?

The “story river” looks a bit like TW. I personally would change some spacing a bit and make the difference between the different posts more visible, but in general I do like it.

[Charlie_Veniot]

@TW_Tones

I genuinely want us to make discourse better for you even although I have different needs.

Here I replied directly to a reply of Mohammad’s

Then clicking on Mohammad it expands like this;

• Which lets you view the exact item I was replying to without scrolling back.

Yes, I am aware of that feature. For my needs, it fails horribly.

It doesn’t make it easy to see the entire chain of of replies that got to your reply. The whole stream of thoughts and words that got to “there”.

Much of what I read, to make sense of it, I need easy access to the whole chain to have the whole series of bread crumbs that help me connect the dots in my head, to understand where the “sub-discussion” came from.

As we can see even in this one thread, which I had intended on using to post the other things that make Talk.TiddlyWiki “Not Made for Me”, it has devolved into dicussion of the three things I think make Talk.TiddlyWiki lousy for non-linear discussions.

This thread of discussion is going to have so many rabbit holes to follow, that I’m going to have a devil of a time sorting out what is what in this thing.

[Charlie_Veniot]

@TW_Tones

Each to their own, and I appreciate your viewpoint

“Each to their own” is often associated, where I’m from, with the word “opinion”.

Just to be clear, I’m not giving opinions about what should be done to make Talk.TiddlyWiki good for everybody, or that what I need would be good for anybody else.

The things I am mentionning here are things that are challenging for my disability, that make me miserable, that make Talk.TiddlyWiki “Not Made for Me”.

In the same way that a set of stairs is not made for somebody in a wheelchair.

To the poor soul in a wheelchair who complains because she/he/they can’t get up the set of stairs, it isn’t an “each to their own” viewpoint the person has. It isn’t that person’s opinion. It is that person’s factual reality.

But if you mean “each of their own” in some other way based on where you are from, could I pester you to clear up what you intended to mean by that?

[Charlie_Veniot]

I am using “SAM’s Simple Theme” at the moment.

"zero noise " is pretty much the same to me.

I have two cognitive disabilities going on. And they conflict very weirdly.

In the one, I get overwhelmed easily by too many distractions.

In the other one, I get flustered if I don’t have the whole picture.

@Charlie_Veniot

Team Developer SQLWindows Community Forum

As busy as that forum looks, I’m instantly calm because I see where everything is, I see what all the “categories” (sub-forums) are. I see what categories have posts I have not read. I see all information I need to know and I can drill down into all of the things I see.

But the key here is that all of the stuff, so much of it visible all at once, is well organized. I know where everything is because I see it.

And there aren’t any distractions. Everything is where it ought to be as per the last time I was there.

“This” is not easy to explain. It is exhausting.

And I am getting into some serious cognitive overstimulation because of the number of individual discussions going on all at the same time. Trying to follow “everything” (all of the “rabbit holes” is stressful, because I have no way to see all of the paths and easily distinguish them.

If I had some kind of visual tree structure I could follow, like a genealogy tree, I’d be able to scroll in (zoom in) and scroll out (zoom out) of each one, able to see the big picture of all the rabbit holes, and drill into each rabbit hole.

TreeSheets is really good for that. I wish it were possible to see all of the “sub-threads” of discussion in one discussion with a TreeSheets interface.

In no time at all, my OP has spawned discussion that is way too overwhelming for me because I can’t see “the whole picture”. I can’t see all of the details in a neat way. It is a tangled and unmanageable mess. And if I can’t see it all, I start to not understand any of it, and I get stressed out something silly.

This is not at all what you guys are doing, by either intention or unintention. The sensation I have is of being hen-pecked or browbeaten. That’s what cognitive and sensory overload and overstimulation feel like.

[Charlie_Veniot]

@Mario

The “story river” looks a bit like TW. I personally would change some spacing a bit and make the difference between the different posts more visible, but in general I do like it.

Oops, missed that. (Part of the challenge dealing with how Discourse handles all the replies on the page.)

I love TiddlyWiki in how it helps me slice and dice intertwingularity. I loathe the story river. To avoid the story river, I make heavy use of modals, open tiddlers in new window, HTML details elements, HTML dialogs, popups, sidebar, and whatever else to avoid the story river.

Any more than three tiddlers in the story river, and I start getting right dysfunctional.

[TW_Tones]

@Charlie_Veniot

But if you mean “each of their own” in some other way based on where you are from, could I pester you to clear up what you intended to mean by that?

This is simply acknowledging the personal and relative needs of us all as an individuals, whether or not we belong to any other co-hort. I would defend your right to have a collapsible and traceable thread as you have outlined here, but I may or may not also use it, but I think we can provide for “each of us to meet our own needs”.

My personal approach in such forums with people from many cultures, ages and not always English as a first language is to consider anyone’s words with generosity. I assume they are being nice and thoughtful even if it does not read that way.

• Many of us Australians love ironic humor and self deprecation , sometimes which we extend to others, but all of this I keep out of clunky textural forums like this, as they are prone to misunderstanding.
• In the same way I avoid any playful or otherwise irony, implications, cynicism etc… lest they confuse or offend.

I advise not to read between my lines, because I did not write between my lines.

[Charlie_Veniot]

each of their own

Not in the sense of “to each of their own opinion”.

A-1.