On Monday, December 28, 2020 at 8:52:20 AM UTC-4 [email protected] wrote:
> That is indeed one of the critical questions. > > Over the years we've had consistent feedback on the name "TiddlyWiki" that > ranges between: > > * I don't care about the name, it's just a meaningless string of letters > * I think the name is fine, it's distinctive, and has few false positives > when Googling > * I think the name diminishes TiddlyWiki > * I think the name is a thinly veiled obscenity > I have struggled over the years trying to convince people of the serious benefit that can be had from "this thing I use with a silly name" and undoubtedly, at times, the name has been a bit of a hindrance in winning people over. However, in the end, I have concluded that it doesn't really matter. I don't think that a TiddlyWiki is a meaningless string of letters but the vast majority of end-users aren't going to care what the programming language/platform is called ... they just want to use the output to do their particular tasks. So I have switched to selling people on the output of the tool since they are more than likely not going to look too deeply under the curtain to the inner sausage-factory that is a TiddlyWiki widget. Now I normally just refer to the "Relevant Output Tool" made from the "Wiki tool that I like to use" or a "Wiki system that uses open web standards" and hope that they find the end result useful. If they don't, it wouldn't matter if it had a sexy name. Javascript itself is a goofy and confusing name ... which went thorough some renaming of its own (Mocha -> Livescript -> Javascript) to get to a goofy and confusing name? There are no shortage of goofily named things that are successful: Git, Rust, Yahoo, Google, Amazon. But they become less goofy when people see the value and utility of them. So while I used to be in the "change-the-name-so-I-find-it-less-embarrasing-to-say-to-my-boss" camp, I am now in the "make-it-indispensible-so-it-doesn't-matter-to-the-end-user-what-it-is-called" camp. Efforts are best directed at making it easy and powerful to use and allowing the particular terminology or branding to fade completely into the background for those who don't care about how things are made. Just like most people don't care that their houses are composed of Studs, Weeping Tiles, Footings, Slips, Bargeboards, Kite Winders, Quoin, Scuncheons, Escutcheons, Scuttles ... they just want them to work and keep them from the elements. /Mike -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/27798c8d-35d6-4a7a-bc53-7c6182451015n%40googlegroups.com.
