Chris, Jeremy...

a) I do understand the reluctancy to see this as personal projects on
your side... I sure feel that, too.

b) While a "pure" community site would deliver a lot, I believe, it
risks not being as prominent or "official" as would probably be good
for it while also containing a huge amount of duplicate information
with respect to tiddlywiki.com, tiddlywiki.org and all the rest of
it... and of course, risking core contributors (also refering to
people around Osmosoft) not taking part but leaving it up to "the
enthousiasts" to, again, find this "too big to succeed" of an
undertaking fail before even having started.

c) I would appreciate if the following kind of thinking would
immediately stop: "But I know where to find the information that I
need, so that must account for something." With respect the
TiddlyVerse, I would argue that one of the pictures that frame the
current situation is more like that of a teacher who doesn't notice or
care about the fact that pupils just don't get whatever he or she
intends to be educational about ...with the occasional smart kid
waving his arms overenthousiastically for the teacher to call upon him
to let him try and explain the thing to the others. On the other its a
picture of a broad range of particular interests and roads to take yet
no trade fair that exposes all these things in an adequate context.

d) The biggest issue today, for me, is that - on the one hand -
information around TiddlyWiki seems so scattered and unorganized that
one just has no idea where to start in order to evaluate what tiddlers
actually are or can deliver in the context of xyz and - on the other -
that no visual design guru seems to have quite taken it upon him to
enter the realm of tiddledom to provide pleasing aesthetics around all
the hacky-but-works coding that takes place.

e) Ok, so it looks like what this project really lacks is a solid
design phase... not just visually, but also in terms of communication
strategy, process analysis, system architecture, etc...

Professional undertakings around high end systems and implementations
probably require tackling such a web based beast from different
angles. So we'd probably find ourselves having requirements with
respect to...

0 - an understanding of all kinds of information that (different)
visitors (might) seek with respect to TiddlyWiki, e.g. the treasure
they are trying to dig out, their intentions and the (user-/click-)
journeys on our site which (we believe) they would suspect to get them
closer to their desired ends

1 - a backend model or store(s) which - in a well structured manner -
provide a solid, extensible framework to gather and manage all
relevant information ...the answer for which cannot simply be "we use
some tiddlyspace" ...but rather involves specific setup / design /
component instructions for each desired (content) feature

2 - controllers and bits of code that allow to compute, manage,
aggegate and pipe the stuff that sits in well known locations of our
model... both in terms of backend as well as frontend

3 - a well defined frontend representation that delivers a powerful
yet streamlined user experience ...in terms of components and the
basic content elements that we expect we'd want / need to use

4 - wrapped up in some overall artistry that matches the whole thing
visually when it comes to background, layout, proportions, colors,
fonts, etc...

f) Perhaps a roadmap would give everyone a solid understanding of
which things are in the focus for which stage / release / milestone of
the overall project of a living "community site".

g) I remember how once we started with the "community space" or
similar undertakings like that... I would believe these eventually
failed or got stuck because there was no common denominator in terms
of a shared understanding of how to actually get the job done, how to
tame the beast with all these ideas floating around.

h) TiddlyWiki suffers a bit from the impression that simple
prototyping allows you to skip a solid design phase along with an
evaluation as to whether or not an idea indeed brings much desired
benefit or should perhaps be postponed or skipped in favor of other,
more critical components, features, etc...

i) So, such a project therefore, to begin with, needs a shared
manifesto, basic tentets, an organization around people who take it
upon them to take care of certain aspects of the project (obviously
with means to contact them) and, of course, transparent documentation
from day 1 along with a common understanding of what needs to be
documented and in which way, so that any contributor understands the
big picture and eventually his part in it.

j) I would also believe that some kind of issue tracking à la Jira or
OnTime to structure and track all the little workpackages and to
visualize dependencies would be highly beneficial as well.

k) Perhaps we need to start by investigating "what qualifies a solid
opensource project" as opposed to amateurish(ly presented) pieces of
information around codebits ...or by asking ourselves what picture we
want to put up for others to admire all the inspiration that those
little tiddlers can provide, if put in the right light.

tb

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