I started graphing the monthly change[1] in users and spaces on
http://tiddlyspace.com about a year ago, so now seems like an
opportune time to reflect on that year.
As of last night there are
3,839 users operating
6,237 spaces containing
526,341 revisions of
251,432 tiddlers having
156,657 different titles[2]
In addition to providing a place where people can host their
TiddlyWiki for free, TiddlySpace has also become a service for
experimenting with the use of tiddlers as the data model for
simple and innovative web apps. Both activites have helped to drive
improvement and development in TiddlyWiki and TiddlyWeb[3]. For
example, as a result of the large number of users on TiddlySpace,
performance and scaling problems in TiddlyWeb have been identified and
solved, sometimes by several orders of magnitude.
If there has been one clear learning from the last year it is that the
tiddler concept is useful generally, not just in TiddlyWiki. The same
principles that make it flexible and powerful in TiddlyWiki are just
as present on the open web, driven by TiddlyWeb giving each tiddler
its own unique URI.
While the TiddlySpace service has matured well from a technical
standpoint, there is still a long way to go to make it easy, effective
and pleasant to use. Most of its power is obscured behind incomplete
or unintuitive interfaces and motivated individuals who hope to find
documentation are stymied: The documentation is either hard to find,
missing or incomplete.
For the second year of TiddlySpace these are the things that must be
fixed. TiddlySpace is a free service and open source project. While
BT/Osmosoft provide resources for hosting the service and leading
development of the project those resources are limited and priority
must be given to BT's internal use of TiddlySpace. This means that for
the public/free TiddlySpace version to be its best the community that
uses it must help to make it great by participating in active and
contentious feedback and dialog. I wrote about this a while ago[4].
To that end I've gone ahead and created a google group specifically
for discussing the use and improvement of tiddlyspace from the
perspective of people who use it:
http://groups.google.com/group/tiddlyspace
(Discussion of the technical guts can carry on in the tiddlyweb group
as TiddlySpace is basically an assemblage of TiddlyWeb plugins.)
I know that people have talked about wanting to use forums or
TiddlySpace itself as the engine for discussion and documentation, but
until such a time as we have the resources for hosting a forum or
developing a forum engine in TiddlySpace, google groups will have to
do. With good email hygiene and discipline about effectively capturing
useful information to wikis, it can work.
Thanks to everyone for helping make TiddlySpace the success it has
been thus far. The community is what makes an open source project
live.
[1] http://tscount.tiddlyspace.com/
[2] this means there are approximately 100,000 tiddlers with the same
names stored in different bags.
[3] http://tiddlyweb.com/
[4] http://cdent.tiddlyspace.com/On%20Being%20Free%20and%20Not%20Product
--
Chris Dent http://burningchrome.com/
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