Another phenomenon worth observing is that there are some Obsidian plugins that usually offer two versions, an open source free v1 version and a v2 version that requires payment. Perhaps the developers of Obsidian plugins can expand from this revenue. But that’s why I don’t like Obsidian. Because I’m not sure that when I need a better plugin, I’ll encounter a requirement to pay for it. I like TiddlyWiki, which is completely open source and the plugin ecosystem is open source and free. I ended up realising that I could share a set of templates across multiple wikis by using TidGi and the nodejs functionality in TiddlyWiki, which is very convenient.
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True, but this means people can only work on tiddlywiki when they have food in their mouth.
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Right. Dead right.
There is no way TW can compete with a system that uses occult marketing tricks.
IMO the reason TW is beaten (in numbers) by Obsidian is cumulative intense marketing focus by Obsidian.
Is Obsidian better than TW? No, no, no.
Obsidian has marketing? I’m pretty sure it’s mostly person-to-person just like TiddlyWiki.
They have some social-media presence, but they don’t flood your inbox AFAIK.
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If so what, exactly what are we missing?
I cannot easily believe Obsidian is using our method.
So what is theirs? If my assert is wrong.
The OP is on point. I haven’t seen an answer yet.
warning: opinion alert
my opinion:
why isn’t tiddlywiki as well-known or widely-used as obsidian? i’d point to (in rough order of importance)
- easier entry for new users (who aren’t looking for maximum customization),
- a dedicated, official workflow for creating, saving, and accessing material online,
- a more professional and modern name (yep) and branding, and
- more modern / purpose-built ui.
i think if all of these were addressed we would be on par with obsidian if the goal is just to get more users. if that is not the goal (and i don’t think it should be), then i’m not sure if marketing is important? things like emacs have gotten popular off their own merits despite no marketing and an absolutely arcane user interface. i’d put TW in more of that category, where it is the perfect tool for a certain type of person / problem, and people who want / need it will find it through word of mouth or forums. if that’s the case, the best we can do to spread it to those people is keep using it, and publish works using it, so more people can see.
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Obsidian is a high-quality, turn-key replacement for Evernote or Onenote, that out of the box does everything you expect from such a tool including WYSIWYG markdown, multi-platform, web-clipping, photo-capture, and (cough) saving. It is available on every platform and although not open-source, it’s data format is arguably less proprietary than that of TiddlyWiki. In addition, it has a cool name, if you are a literate or media-literate person. Obsidian also has a place where people can upload plugins and have some level of official recognition.
TiddlyWiki … leaves it up to the user to find 3rd party solutions to every single problem, including saving. More importantly, there is no vetting of those 3rd party solutions. None of them get the official TW imprimatur to help guide new users. Also, the name “TiddlyWiki” screams “amateur” to a whole lot of people, particularly outside the UK.
When you lay it out like that, you should be able to see why Obsidian has taken off.
In particular, I think at a minimum saving is something that should have an official in-house solution. I’ve been working the last couple weeks at putting together the pieces to replace Timimi. But even if I succeed, it will just be an “also ran”, just like TImimi. Which is probably why Riz threw in the towel.
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PaulH - you wrote - “I hate to sound clichéd, but I think we just need to keep being us and not try to make comparisons”
I agree - last time I said small can be beautiful I got attacked for it - as if constantly pushing Tiddlywiki to larger audiences was morally positive and letting it remain only a significant contender was somehow a moral failing.
Personally I love the fact that I can stick Tiddlywiki on any of my devices, I have the same huge knowledge base on my phone, tablet and laptop, its close to 2million words of mainly text pictures and some time code annotated instructional videos.
Yes I had to figure out ways to get it working as I wanted on my Android phone and tablet and yes the lack of an autosave out of the box is frustrating at times and so we end up using TiddlyDesktop and the mobile vartiants but that is the price you pay for allowing the browser to be main viewing platform - thats precisely the reason I can get my TW on pretty much any device because it does not deal with the issue of the host - it simply sits in the browser and the price we pay is that the browser will have certain security restrictions that prevent a trivial autosave.
I certainly do not want to trust my 5 or 6 year project to online companies and I very much value having complete control over my data. The way that politics is currently affecting people’s right to their own online data from certain US software giants does not make me feel comfortable - I want hard copy in my own possession - after all I spent a minimum of 20 hours a week these last years using TW to handle the results of my research project.
I know plenty of people who could not cope with TW, people who really struggle with computers but they would also not be able to use a lot of other software I use daily. Does that make people who are satisfied with the current status morally wrong?
Sure if someone can figure out a way to have all of the bells and whistles and preserve the beautiful capacity for customisation, configuration and transportability of TW then great but the way I see some of the limitations are down to some of the strengths - like single file, no installation - works on any platform that hosts a compliant browser etc.
The way I see it - its a bit like wordpress vs custom built websites, I wrote a website in wordpress for a charity and also a friend, absolute nightmare - had to write plugins to interact with other plugins to get them to work the required way. Previously I had generally worked directly in PHP, JS, MySQL, HTML and CSS using boiler plates and so on but in full control. Which is best? I suggest neither - Wordpress is the only answer for some folks with limited technical knowledge but as we all know the price you pay is that you get channeled down prescribed paths, you cannot go off piste elegantly. Different paths for different people I suggest.
Last time I looked Rasberry Pi was doing fine but is still a specialist bit of kit, should they be trying to reach everyone or maybe instead just fitting in a certain niche doing what they do really well?
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Okay, except for the fact that if it weren’t for the things Scribs mentioned, Tweaky - sorry, TiddlyWiki - would be huge. Enormously popular.
“True, but this means people can only work on tiddlywiki when they have food in their mouth.”
That is true of many worthy open source projects yet they persist.
There are successful hybrids where some revenue is generated to reward the most active volunteers but in general when software is fully commercialized things go in a certain direction - I speak as someone who has not used Windows for over a decade because I got fed up with forced updates screwing up my customised setup because MS thought they owned my machine. Sure like I said there is a middle ground but it’s a precarious one - the slide into ever deepening levels of commerciality is not always easy to resist. Its not easy to keep the culture of open source in a commercial setup - commercial interests start leading to proprietary solutions for data storage, non-customer ownership of their own data and so on, its easy to see where the problem lies - how do you keep your product unique when the source code is out there for any one else to use and develop a similar product perhaps even boosted by being able to learn from the mistakes of the first product?
I am not arguing against Jeremy and others getting something back - not that at all - I just wonder if a rapid rise in the popularity of TW might actually contain hidden dangers?
As every owner of a family business knows it is very hard to secure your life’s work against the ravages on industrial greed when your offspring inherit the business - that’s why there are things like commercial trusts - for instance IKEA was placed under trust governance because the owner did not trust their own offspring to follow the direction that they had forged out.
I am all in favour of solving the autosave feature and volunteers being rewarded for their time - just pointing out how unplanned and unprotected growth has it’s own dangers - although of course if TW ever did get commercialised it is very probable that a splinter group would take the last version of the available open source and continue from there so at a personal level I feel there would be a solution for people like me so perhaps there is nothing to worry about but its good to play around with these thoughts as a balance to the push to just make TW ever bigger and more popular, we live in a competitive age where bigger is often taken to mean better but it is not always so because the journey to “bigger” sometimes has unexpected twists.
Staying under the radar of large hungry corporations sometimes has its own advantages - again another large corporation Coke owns most small once independent soda brands around the world - if you start a soda business and grow it won’t be long before Coca-Cola is knocking on your door with a carrot and stick approach to bringing you into the family.
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I used to think this, not any more. Not that we could not improve it a little, I have with custom buttons and tools. I can use the preview if what I see is importiant, but 85% of the time it is not, because Wiki Text gives me the way to structure content.
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But not only that; a bigger community gives us better solutions. The size of our community is a tangible bottle neck to the development of the project.
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My two cents:
- I think that the quick start section of TiddlyWiki web site is getting better as an agile way to introduce new users, particularly by pointing to TiddlyHost, that in my experience is the best way to have several people in a workshop or a class having their wiki running in minutes.
In practice I use TiddlyHost to present custom editions that solve several problems for me by uploading my custom edition and using it as a template for my workshops/classes. I think that TiddlyHost can be a lab for quickly testing TiddlyWiki usage and adoption by having customs editions there and analyze how they behave in popularity or continuous usage and maybe an option to add open metrics for TiddlyWiki templates is something @simon could be interested in explore. - I would like to have custom editions (maybe taken from the open metrics in TiddlyHost from the previous point) advised in the DIY part of Tiddly Wiki’s site, so you don’t need to start from empty.html. That something we have done (we call our editions seeds, playing with the idea of TiddlWiki powered digital gardens/oasis) with great advantage for our workshops and TW stickness in our local community and I think customs editions from members of this community can be pretty helpful. I’m for sure I’m planing to explore the one made by @linonetwo’s with Elixir mind map capabilities and beautiful themes already integrated.
Cheers,