Some underlying themes that have been coming up include a fear that the tiddlywiki project is dying (or at least looking like it's dying to outside observers), and that the resources around the project are disorganised. There seem to be many potential contributors that sometimes find it hard to get started.
I believe that one of the simpler causes is that over the last 4 years the content of the main tiddlywiki site hasn't been actively updated and managed. As a result of this neglect (and as we've been discussing in a separate thread) many of the links at http://tiddlywiki.com/ have been dying off, and none of the new stuff (like Julio's) has been incorporated. As a result, to a new visitor, the project feels like at worst it's dying, and at best that the community resources are hopelessly hard to find and disorganised. Part of the reason is that even before working at BT, I was pretty unreliable at performing updates to the content; the process was ridiculously tedious and error prone. There were two or three updates by Osmosoft but they were fairly superficial. tiddlywiki.com is the de facto focal point for users of TiddlyWiki, and it should clearly lay out the available resources, and showcase the activities of the community around the project. It really ought to, for instance, list the few dozen plugins that are most widely used; keeping that list up to date and authoritative shouldn't be an onerous task to someone participating regularly in the discussion groups. At the moment we all know that the FET plugin is critical to lots of quite basic TiddlyWiki requirements, but you wouldn't know that from poking around tiddlywiki.com. The process to update tiddlywiki.com is much better now; there is a staging space for the content for the content at http://tiddlywiki-com.tiddlyspace.com/, and so we've got a lot of flexibility for multiple authorship, and pulling in content from other places. So, now that I've got my independence, as I've mentioned before, one of the things I want to do is start properly and regularly editing the content of tiddlywiki.com. Tiddlywiki.com gets quite a lot of traffic, and doing a better job of showcasing links to community created resources, and bringing traffic to them may well improve the incentives to do such things. There's already a separate thread about the updates, please do shout if you've any suggestions, questions, or offers of help. Best wishes Jeremy On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 5:20 PM, Julio <[email protected]> wrote: > Wolgang says, > .."It just doen't works for very long if only 1-2 seriously > commited developers are regularly giving dependable and professional > advise, like Eric and Fred at that time, and 1-2 enthusiasic users who > regularly check to give sufficient every-day use responses. Giving and > taking becommes too one-sided and sooner or later one can't help but > give up." > > Agreed with you Wolfgang. So very true, > > However, some of us, I'll take myself as an example here, are lurkers > and can't contribute more, because eventhough we are enthusiasts and > can "dabble" with Tiddlywiki are not to the level of others are far > understanding intristics. We are those forgotten weekend warriors who > can only tinker and enjoy what the knowledgeable few have to offer. > > I wish I knew javascript and html, and css better and would be able to > dedicate full time to these. I do say this with a sense of guilt, > being that I have been following on and off this group for a couple of > years now. But, alas that is not possible. All I can do is play, > study, and tinker with random ideas from this group and searching > through the web. Hence my recent little test site at: Tiddlyspot [1]. > This is what I consider that I can do at the present moment and > hopefully some others can benefit from this. > > Remember, that "bad things happen for good reasons"...maybe this > exactly what needs to happen for Tiddlywiki community to wake up and > get that spark of energy again. Not that I want Eric to be in this > predicament at all...but you get my gist. > > Be well everyone. :) > > [1] http://jpen24mtc.tiddlyspot.com/ > > > On Nov 11, 9:36 am, wolfgang <[email protected]> wrote: >> Thanks for sharing your inside views Chris and Jeremy, I really >> appreciate. >> >> >>> At some point, Tiddly is going to live or die by whether or not the folks >> >>> most committed to it find a long-term model for supporting the software >> >>> and >> >>> themselves. >> >> >> I completely disagree with this, and I think it is the prevelance of >> >> this attitude in this thread which has contributed to me becoming >> >> angry and finding it hard to find a way into the thread that is >> >> clear and focused. >> >> > Seems to me that, for Tiddly to move down that path, some core group needs >> > to >> > provide the focus for a year or two - and Jerymy and Erik seem like the >> > obvious candidates. >> >> I encoundered a somewhat similiar difficulty to stay focused on >> contributing some more constructive. But then it also became very >> clear that those voices of feeling insecure about the future of >> TiddlyWiki - also because the involvment of non-transparent financial >> interests - brought a sort of anger and grieve too: that a TiddlyWiki >> depending on too few active developers could indeed die very quickly. >> >> Though these feelings aren't particularly new: I too really needed to >> take a break from the lack of regular contributors to this >> 'community'. It just doen't works for very long if only 1-2 seriously >> commited developers are regularly giving dependable and professional >> advise, like Eric and Fred at that time, and 1-2 enthusiasic users who >> regularly check to give sufficient every-day use responses. Giving and >> taking becommes too one-sided and sooner or later one can't help but >> give up. One could deny or lament, but in the end that's how it's >> been: Few out of enthusiasm will fill this lack with too much >> engagement while exacty this lack of a broad 'community' sooner or >> later makes it sort of a chore - not neccessarily by itself but >> compounded by usually occuring demands of daily life - take a break >> for some time and finally are gone. Don't think too often this happens >> out of interrest in TiddlyWiki has outgrown itself, but here I can >> only talk for myself. Sure there were always a couple of new >> enthousiasts and this cycle rolled on. >> >> And now the only one who could sustain this service at such a >> professional level since it's beginnings could drop away! >> >> Well, if that doesn't appear a bit bleak for the future of TW I don't >> know what else! Preaching an ideal community in this situation surely >> wont help. It isn't there in it's double-sense of voluntarity _and_ >> continuity. Just developers and users coming and moving on most of the >> time with too rare exceptions. Where the possible lack of the rare >> amounts to sort of a catastrophe. >> >> Maybe my view is a bid out of relation, because I don't have any >> experience with other software communities to compare, but that's been >> the situation as it presented itself to me here as an at one point >> very enthusiastic TiddlyWiki contributor to this support forum. >> >> Beside having further degressed and maybe even miss-used this thread >> of Eric for venting off - but I believe nevertheless this IS very >> pertaining to the issue of Eric not being able to contribute anymore - >> and very realistic fears what this would entail for TiddlyWiki. >> >> However, now I'm also glad at least Jeremy could appease some of the >> most immediate fears. Thanks again for everyone's contributions. > > -- > 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. > > -- Jeremy Ruston mailto:[email protected] http://www.tiddlywiki.com -- 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.
