This should attract more users!

[twMat]

@jeremyruston

I’m just back from a break, and so will answer briefly for now.

I’m still hoping for some more feedback on the OP. Please note that I have modified a key sentence in it.

The specific suggestion is reasonable, but as others have noted there might be better ways to achieve a similar result, such as a download wizard that allows plugins to be pre-installed.

Please note that the proposal concerns a step before the user has an incentive to go through a wizard or to download anything. It is intended to hook the users by, as directly as possible, showing them how TW is applicable for their specific use case. If the user does not believe TW will solve their needs, then it is not likely that the user will download anything.

At that point in time, the demands on the user must be absolutely minimal; We use the little incentive they have that made them visit the site to begin with, to lure them into reading the labels for the prominent “buttons” as they scan for solutions for their needs. (This shows the rough idea.) Clicking a button is immediately gratifying as they see a demo of the edition - they get hooked! NOW they are willing to download.

As for how “perfect” these editions have to be; IMO it is not a binary choice between “perfectly designed and maintained forever” vs “not at all”. Rather, the wiser choice is to look at the goal for this, i.e will it adopts more users than what the site currently does! …and so I ask you, do you see any reason why the proposal would not do this!?

Thank you!

[TW_Tones]

Some key observations about these issues, I have put a lot of content up about it before.

• In general I agree with the needs @twMat is asking be addressed
• An edition needs little if any updates if it is self contained and works
  • The problems is users quickly expect to extend it, so treat it as a platform, which makes update nessasary and the need to keep it open to change.
• I have discussed elsewhere a Wiki edition generator where one has a “recipie” of components, we have the technology, if we can get the system, even standards in place, it should be able to reduce the cost of edition development and maintenance. Even a diminishing cost with each new edition.
• I have persued a few edition development projects by myself, but my interest faded when no one participated in the continuose review/feedback process as I developed it.
• I continuosly improve a number of wikis and they all contain my own content, without a mechanisium to seperate private from public content, it is too much effort to do without support and encoragement.

[markkerrigan]

@Justin_H

I feel like this should be a neccesary point to discuss: we should also talk about the archiving and versioning of these editions.

One of the main reoccurring issues I’ve seen is that, due to each edition being an indepentent project, they are left under the care of their creators to keep maintained and available.

I am a bit late to this thread, but I want to emphasize this point. A prime example is the Notebook theme. It has not been updated to TW 5.3.5. At a certain point unless the community editions are being constantly updated to reflect the latest and greatest techniques in TW, it becomes harder for someone to come around and start using it as their daily TW.

It’s a challenge because anything offered from TiddlyWiki.com is seen as “official” (such as plugins and themes) and therefore brings an assumption these plugins and themes are officially supported. Making download links to other community editions would also imply these community editions are officially supported, which could increase the workload on the current maintainers.

I support the idea of making community editions more prominent. But I think it could be done by refactoring the Community tiddler to a more visually appealing presentation (include screenshot buttons such as used in Find Out More.

The other problem with many of these discussions about how to get more users for TiddlyWiki is the fact those of us who read and post in the forums are often long time TiddlyWiki users already, so it is hard for us to know if doing X will really increase the user base.