If accept the learning curve of Tiddlywiki is not short and ignore it for now, and also appreciating all great and lovely features of it!
What is the worst feature of Tiddlywiki, the one makes you frustrated?
Maybe it’s not the worst but I find using images quite convoluted and limited.
Interesting example @sortega in that: Yes -unless you want to store images directly in your .html file (presuming the single-file model of wiki), which would quickly grow to unwieldy proportions thereby- the inclusion of images stored outside the .html file is not so easy.
OTOH: though it took a bit of time (and a healthy dose of community support to get it working) there is now a solution whereby you can simply drag&drop and image into a tiddler, whereupon it is automagically stored in the IPFS cloud at a canonical URL of your own creation! If there is any other freeware in the world that delivers such powerful functionality with such ease of use, i for one am unaware of it.
So it goes with a lot of things in TiddlyWikiWorld, it seems to me: tho a bit quirky and not perfectly natural on the face of it, many of those things that would take serious programming savvy to implement on any other platform are possible for non-devs to implement in TW, if you don’t mind either (a) doing a bit of digging to find the appropriate wikitext syntax, and/or (b) reaching out to the community, which is ever-so-ready & willing to help. Again, speaking more generally: nothing else like it out there, in my experience!
/walt
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The worst feature of TiddlyWiki is the nerd cringe caused by the use of words like “automagically” and “concatenation” by the TiddlyWiki community. 
But seriously, for me it is clearly the fact that a independent saving mechanism must be set up, via a multi-step process, just to get someone to download it and try it. And there are a multitude of saving mechanisms to have to choose from. Obviously not a problem for me personally anymore, but definitely a roadblock for promoting TiddlyWiki and creating tools for non-programmers. Get past that hurdle, and you can use it and learn little by little. But that is a big hurdle to throw at people at STEP ONE.
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And no, Walt, that joke wasn’t specifically aimed at you!
First word that came to me immediately, @Mohammad, in response to your question is: DOCUMENTATION.
More specifically: In terms of this Grand Unified Theory of Documentation, i would rate TW’s delivery against those 4 forms of Documentation in the following order:
- REFERENCE: On this score “the Mother Ship” (TiddlyWiki.com) is pretty good, but could deliver better against the goal of accessibility in-context.
- EXPLANATION: Though it’s anecdotal and could be better organised (something i hope to see happening, since this move to Discourse), this community is virtual firehose of good explanations!
- TUTORIAL: Though surprisingly scant, given how many years TW has been out there, excellent tutorial material has started coming online in force, in form of both video (hat-tip to @sobjornstad on this score) and more reader-oriented form (like your Shiraz tutorials, Mohammad, so nicely packaged with the plugin).
- HOWTO: This is the score on which i think TW has the most room to improve. Inspired by @sortega case above, consider the archetypal UseCase of: “I’m trying to build an image-rich wiki site whose images are stored at my choice of free online image host”… Good luck in that case trying to find a good single-source HowTo at either TiddlyWiki.com, or here in the community forum -or anywhere else, for that matter.
(Of course: as i was once told as tenant of a commercial landlord: “You can either complain about it, or else fix it,” i guess i should just invest a bit of time in fixing this problem right here in these co-created forums -right?
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Heh: no offence taken, mate; right you are! /w
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I think it’s the misconception people have that it must be too hard to use when they read/hear the word “wiki” in the title. Every person I’ve talked to about it has had that reaction. I personally like the name and have no ideas or clue how to get past this except through patience and examples.
In the spirit of self criticism.
I think the Worst Features if any come from a failure to translate the technical to the practical and the reverse.
Technical to the practical
My first example would be the New Release information we see in each release, and much of the documentation. It is always brief and often only makes sense to those intimately involved in the issue it seeks to address. Some supporting information is sometimes required and the documentation updated, but far too often even this is minimal.
Its only in community forums that we eventually get “plain English” explanations of new features and rarely is ever an explanation of how and why a user/designer would make use of it. Then unfortunately this information is scattered rather than consolidated.
Practical to the technical
Whilst the community actively discuss practical solutions we do not capture these well. but there is also an issue when you have a practical requirement that can’t be satisfied and you go looking for a technical solution.
I and others have raised many issues and started discussions in relation to a “practical limitation” unfortunately most often to get traction you need to phrase these in technical terms we may be unfamiliar with. If you succeed in doing this, often your suggestion is a rejected as that is not possible which is a technical interpretation of your request. The problem is the practical need is not being addressed.
Personally when others have practical problems, I can often find a solution for them without reverting to development, however when I have exhausted the possibilities and need development support its not so easy because of the practical technical gap.
Why would this exist?
Perhaps because the developers are small in number and can get overwhelmed or the community has being so good at answering questions, too few are actively addressing the technical/practical divide (with notable exceptions) especially when it comes to a need for technical intervention.
Simultaneously to the above, new technical members have a habit of wanting to write plugins and javascript solutions, when there already exists a tiddlywiki way, with widgets and wikitext.
Just some thoughts through observation, and with a desired to find solutions
Tones
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Ciao M.
I guess frustration is related to skills one LACKS. I’m not a programmer and really the mindset of it is not my style at all.
SO, the SYNTAX of macros in TW I often find uber-confusing. Somewhat an arbitrary HEATH ROBINSON over complex set of confusions …
In my own defense I CAN, in practice, mostly understand things like POWERSHELL scripting. But TW, Advanced Script Use, is very difficult for me as the syntax for advanced procedures seems to be a mish-mash of accretions. It certainly ain’t (semantically) logical! THAT DELAYS what I can do.
Just a comment
TT
Among the many odd differences between British English and American English, in the U.S, a “Heath Robinson” is called a “Rube Goldberg”… and in Denmark, it’s called a “Storm-P Machine”
-e
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What a perfect illustration of how the “Jargon Gap” can be a bilateral thing, i.e. : not only geek-speak that eludes the non-programmer constituency, but also how literary/ cultural references can be lost on those of us coming from a different cultural context (e.g. /me: grew up w/ Rube Goldberg refs, but never heard of Heath Robinson). In this case, both TT and Eric did the right thing by embedding links on those potentially confusing references, but… Well, that’s a cultural norm that we in this wiki community need to be consciously leading by our example!
/walt
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I could share hundreds of these (Brit ex-pat of ~12 years) but I’ll tell you my first lingo-bomb.
It’s 1998 or 9. I’m driving in New York – Hoboken (hey Frank, how’s it going?). It’s late. It’s dark. And I’m hungry.
I enter a Popeye’s drive-thru (Fried chicken etc for anyone that’s never heard of them). I order chicken, mashed potato and gravy. A heavily Hispanic-accented young lady says over the intercom, “Do you want blub-blub-blub or a biscuit with that?”
Now, any transatlantic yanks or brits are already ahead of me here… but for those unaware, here’s the confusion…
UK-Biscuit. US: Cookie
US-Biscuit. UK: Nothing. It’s a sort of dinner role affair with almost no flavor like a lightweight scone. More popular down south than up north. Comes with everything. And gravy. Usually white gravy. Ick.
All I knew was biscuit==cookie and that’s it. At the time, I’d never heard of (or seen) a US-biscuit.
I’m sitting in my car wondering what the hell to say. I don’t want a cookie with my chicken… that’s crazy, right? And as for blub-blub-blub… I never did find out what that was. After asking her to repeat herself three times, I mumbled a quick “Neither…” and drove around to the delivery window.
Later, someone explained the “biscuit” was a blob of baked dough to dip in your gravy. Nobody could figure out what the blubby thing might have been.
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Documentation CAN use some improvements. Especially the more technical notes for developers. I had to go through a lot of loc to finally understand how to architect my js plugins without reinventing the wheels unnecessarily.
This is fortunately a work in progress. And perhaps, for better or worse, this guarantees a market for TW development specialists 
.
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I feel the problem of the syntax is split between the markup syntax and the macros and filters which can be quite complex. I find it similar to Excel in that there are a lot of possible “formulas” but it’s not always intuitive as its mostly trial and error until you understand amd get it right
The name. To 360 million English speaking people a small fish is a Minnow, and a Tiddler isn’t anything, but it sounds a lot like a person who does very bad things.
To those same people, TiddlyWiki sounds like Tiddly winks, a mostly forgotten children’s game.
When people are looking for solutions from the list of dozens at Wikipedia, their eyes will slide right past the entry for TiddlyWiki, because they don’t have time for kid’s stuff.
Someday someone will come along who is a marketing expert and thus get Jeremy’s attention, and then the name will change. In the mean time, I refer to it as TW technology and hope no one asks what TW stands for.
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All true and good points Mark.
I’m hoping/dreading (in equal proportions) the next version, TWX, actually becomes version 9 –
TWIX
Magic TWIX!
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
@Mark_S to deal with the apparent triviality of the name I do encourage people to call it a platform “TiddlyWiki Platform” which transforms its seriousness and implies an extensive solution. Personally I feel we should edit sources everywhere and add “platform”.
Given tiddlywiki is such an obscure name is actually search engine and social media gold. It remains almost unique, never confused, and is like an established brand without all the “astroturfers”.
The issue being that “Twix” is the name of a leading confectionary. Not sure this would be a good idea…