Riz - you've wonderfully captured my exact thoughts on this topic as well! Very well said! I typed up a much longer response, but after rereading, Im basically just agreeing with you point by point several times, so I removed it lol.
I don't want what you said to disappear - Can we come up with some new action items (milestones in github) from this? How can we use this as a springboard for change? On Wednesday, January 9, 2019 at 7:28:05 AM UTC-6, Riz wrote: > > to be fair, if you want to consider competition on the FOSS platform, > consider vnote (https://tamlok.github.io/vnote/en_us/) or trillium ( > https://github.com/zadam/trilium). Both of them are less than 3 years old > but has managed to surpass Tiddlywiki in GitHub stars. > > Tiddlywiki has several advantages over these two. Two major things that > come to mind are. > 1) Templating > 2) Ability to have multiple copies of the same software running at the > same time, essentially making it scalable without limits. > > However, Tiddlywiki still gets beaten back when it comes to it. The > reasons I think that causes this are, IMO. > > 1. Ease of entry > 2. Appearance > 3. Documentation > > 1. Tiddlywiki is a solution that requires intermediate activation energy > from the user. People who decide to set up a personal knowledge base come > in two groups*. Either "I want no headache, just install it and push an > icon to get it up and running" group. Or the "I am doing it right this > time, even if it takes some time" group. The first group opts for things > like Evernote, or Joplin, or the apps I mentioned above and so on. The > second groups goes for elaborate structures like org-mode or mediawiki and > so on. > > There has been long pending issues to reduce the activation energy to get > started. A good example of the effort in this direction is Jed's Bob. > However, it will take a long time before a newbie will find Bob, long > before which he would have given up the idea to continue using TW. Having > to install run time separately is so 2000s. It will not run well with the > post millennial generation. > > My point is this. Tiddlywiki should concentrate more on the Windows OS > users, which forms 80% of the desktop and laptop users, rather than the > "ready-to-hack-around" Unix cult. This is coming from an active Linux user. > > Consider this: create an installer for windows that will check for > existence of node run time in the system, and if not, will download and > install it for the user with user permission. > > 2. Appearance. Tiddlywiki does look like it was conceived in the 90s and > was designed in the 2000s. Consider it constructive criticism, but who > uses a depressing grey tone as the major colour? Was the primary goal to > appear appealing to emo kids? > > Notice how every one of the new age note taking app which surges past > Tiddlywiki in stars and downloads does look "nice"?. Heck, if any of them > appeared in the search results around the time I started looking for a new > note taking application, I wouldn't have given Tiddlywiki a second thought. > > 3. It is nice to see that documentation efforts are occurring at higher > pace than before. There is still lot to go. For eg: the getting started > tiddler. It could do with an recommended way of installation for different > platforms. May be it will look opinionated, but it will help a new person > to get it up and running in the smallest possible time. > > I am not claiming that these three will magically turn around TWs > fortunes. However, these three are the looming issues, IMO. > > I feel like atleast some hold the attitude that "if they don't find TW > good enough, their lose." After all, there are no monetary gains in having > a larger following for a FOSS project. Consider that more people also means > more contributions, more ideas and a better product for all. > > In the end, this is another wall of text. It will disappear from our feeds > in 24 hours and from our minds faster than that. Makes you think about the > pointlessness of everything. > > TLDR: May be community need to have a sit down on why TW5 lags behind much > less featured competition. > > > * Remember that the binary classification is made for understanding sake > and people exist in a spectrum. > > -- 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 post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/d1c57b2c-3357-4e1a-9e70-e298e02f70f3%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
