I'm going to throw in my two cents- I promise I'll leave it at that. I have done just that on other issues.
I've only been using TW intensively for a couple of years, and as I've said elsewhere I "bounced off" of it a few times- repeatedly became interested because people I respected were enthusiastic about it, tried to learn about it by reading web sites, downloaded it, played with it a little, failed to "get" it, and drifted off- and I'm a nearly ideal case, I've been a professional programmer for a very long time, and was an amateur before that- this stuff is more than a living to me, it's something I'm passionate about. It still took me perhaps four distinct attempts over something more than a year before I started seeing the possibilities, and how it would be useful to me personally. Most people encountering it for the first time are probably not hard-core technophiles, and aren't likely to devote that much time. I think the person investigating it "cold" wants to know those two things, and probably within the first 5 to 15 minutes; What is it, and what can it do for me? Unfortunately, IMHO, those basic first questions are the weakest point of practically all of the information sources that a beginner will find. Much of what is available has clearly been written by people who have been "close" to it for a long time and have forgotten what it was like NOT to understand the basic concepts yet. A lot of sources don't even try, they presume some familiarity instead. I am NOT saying it's a trivial task. I'm not at all happy with my own attempts (on my web site), so I'm certainly not in a position to give specific advice to anyone. IMHO, the "single-page application" paradigm is just that- a new, different concept for most people. It's a great deal like trying to explain the first computer spreadsheet to someone who's never seen one or even heard of one- mostly we're reduced to giving specific examples which may or may not be relevant for the reader, or just saying "just try it", which is pretty much just giving up in frustration. As I wrote on my site, one co-worker I introduced to TW said something I find very interesting- she said "it's like your own personal web". Clearly that's not accurate in any technical sense, but I think it's a valuable insight as to how someone coming at it "cold" might first begin to perceive it's value. All of the issues about how information should be stored and presented to those already interested in modifying TW for their own purposes is valuable and clearly worthwhile, but those are also much more tractable tasks for technical people. A more difficult task, but to my mind more important in the long run, is answering the most basic of questions for a not-terribly-technical audience- what is it, how is it useful? If we can't answer that for people of different backgrounds in a paragraph or two, and I don't think we have yet, we'll always severely limit the audience for anything that comes after. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
