Hi David Very tactfully put! Not at all a problem to bring up things like this.
The background is that when I first released and named TiddlyWiki I had no idea it was anything more than a quickly knocked-off one-off demo. Where I was bought up (late 1960’s East Yorkshire, in the north of England), the word “tiddly” and “tiddler” primarily meant “small”. “Tiddler” was specifically a small fish, not worth the bother of catching. There’s also “tiddly” meaning slightly drunk. I like wordplay, alliteration and so on, and just liked the tick-tock rhythm of the name. I’ve occasionally encountered the reaction you’ve found, but it’s relatively rare. Perhaps because English isn’t the first language of so many members of the community. Amongst non-British English speakers, I’ve met once or twice met people who have told me that they first thought that the name was a joke at their expense, tricking them into saying something that was hilariously rude in British English. In retrospect, I think I should have picked a new name for TiddlyWiki5 to simplify separating TiddlyWiki Classic when Googling for information. I agree with you that “card”-based names seem the most appropriate replacement. Having said that, browsing App Stores makes me wonder whether having a ludicrous but distinctive name isn’t a better choice than a bland collision of concrete adjectives and nouns. As to where we go from here, I’d be inclined to think that the boat has sailed in terms of renaming TiddlyWiki in it’s present form (but am open to counter-arguments). But if I were to, say, try to launch a commercial service based on TiddlyWiki, I certainly wouldn’t do so under the name “TiddlyWiki”; I think of it as the name of the underlying open source project, without necessarily being exposed in the descriptions of products that are built from it. There was an early case of this with Twine, the hypertext authoring engine; it evolved from TiddlyWiki Classic and still uses it for the runtime engine. But Twine is marketed in its own right, not as something based on TiddlyWiki. As I say, views on this or any other topic are very welcome. Best wishes Jeremy. > On 25 Sep 2016, at 03:04, David Szego <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hope this doesn't offend, especially Jeremy, but it's due to common reactions > in conversations lately. > > When I've been showing my Cardo project to people, and explaining that it's > based on this awesome self-contained javascript development environment in a > single html file that lets you completely contain your entire knowledge store > in a wikified hypercard sort of metaphor etc. etc. called "TiddlyWiki"... > > ...the reaction I get is usually along the lines of one raised eyebrow, a bit > of a disgusted look, and the words "Tiddly winkie?" repeated back to me. > > I get that "Tiddler" is probably a very fine British term (I'm assuming?) > meaning a reminder, or something.... but here in Canada at least, just saying > Tiddler or Tiddly reeks of pedophilic abuse. Especially with the extremely > unfortunately paired term "wiki", which ends up making it all sound too much > like "diddlywinkie" - "playing with your peepee." > > That's a big part of why I called it "Cardo". And let's face it - TW Classic > and TW5 are basically the amazing evolution of Apple's Hypercard. I have a > hard time even typing "Tiddler" in these forums, let alone saying it, but no > problem talking about "Cards", which they essentially are, by look and feel > as well as by function. > > So... Maybe the next evolution of TW should be towards something more > user-adoptable, like calling it WikiCards or something? > > Again, sorry to offend... but judging by the reaction I get when talking > about the tool, (no innuendo intended there!!), I can't be the only one. > > Cheers, > David. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TiddlyWikiDev" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywikidev > <https://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywikidev>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywikidev/4eaea5fa-3a6b-44ea-8f73-dc8a669a4dd0%40googlegroups.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywikidev/4eaea5fa-3a6b-44ea-8f73-dc8a669a4dd0%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout > <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWikiDev" 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/tiddlywikidev. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywikidev/09B20B4E-E1AD-44DA-B023-A5097F8A2F09%40gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
