TiddlySpace Annual Report 2011

[chris...@gmail.com]

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/
[...]

[Måns]

Hi Chris

>      3,839 users operating
>      6,237 spaces containing
>    526,341 revisions of
>    251,432 tiddlers having
>    156,657 different titles[2]

Great :-)
Congratulations...

>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.¨
----

> 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.

Check,,,

> 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

Thanks :-)

> 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.

Ok - discipline has to be heightend - and contributions has to come
from the users - Got it -!!

> Thanks to everyone for helping make TiddlySpace the success it has been thus far. The community is what makes an open source project live.

Thanks for making TiddlySpace/TiddlyWeb in the first place - it has
multiplied the possibilites for using TiddlyWiki with a factor I can't
even count...
Imho anyone who is fascinated by TiddlyWiki - should try TiddlySpace
to get even more reason to be fascinated...

Thank you very much for the report - Its great to see some statistics,
and get some thoughtfull and thoughtprovoking comments to "connect the
dots"/explain the current status of things..

Good job!!

Måns Mårtensson

[TonyM]

Thanks for the report.

As substantial contributor (Super user class) to TiddlyWiki user group in the past, I am keen to be more involved with tiddlyspace but as Identified

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.

This is what is stopping my deeper involvement. Even just a fee more inroads to understanding what a space is would help. Just a little too much jargon is used. Small but regular contributions are what I can offer but there is a big hump in my way which requires a more concerted effort on my part to overcome. Perhaps I will get a chance in the Holiday season (here in Australia), perhaps not.

Thanks for the great work so far, not withstanding the above.

[cdent]

On Dec 6, 5:48 am, TonyM <anthony.mus...@gmail.com> wrote:

> This is what is stopping my deeper involvement. Even just a fee more
> inroads to understanding what a space is would help. Just a little too much
> jargon is used. Small but regular contributions are what I can offer but
> there is a big hump in my way which requires a more concerted effort on my
> part to overcome. Perhaps I will get a chance in the Holiday season (here
> in Australia), perhaps not.

Yeah, it's tricky. If you've ever had a chance to browse around the
spaces of the active TiddlySpace developers you'll see that even after
well more than a year there is a lot of confusion and debate about
what a "space" is. For some starting points, if you are curious, see
http://april1111.tiddlyspace.com/ and http://manifesto2.tiddlyspace.com/

Those show some ideas, but not conclusions. And even since then (April
of this year) there have been some changing attitudes.

At core a space is a collection of tiddlers, some of which are only
visible and editable to people who are members of the space. When a
space is created it has one member, the person who created it. That
person may add more members. All members have the same powers, so
subsequent members can add more members. Tiddlers from other spaces
can be included, in a read only fashion, in the current space through
a process called inclusion.

The members see the "private" view of a space, meaning they see all
the content. Non-members see the "public" view, meaning they only see
public content. By default content created in a space is public, but
this default can be changed. Public and private content can be
switched back and forth in the TiddlyWiki interface.

In addition to in-tiddlywiki, tiddlers can be viewed and edited in a
variety of representations. In my own space, http://cdent.tiddlyspace.com/
, I use what's called the HTML representation, augmented with
javascript found elsewhere in tiddlyspace along with some I've written
myself. This gives my space something a bit more like a traditional
wiki than TiddlyWiki, while still allowing me to go into TiddlyWiki if
I want to do things that are currently only possible there (such as
switching between public and private).

I suspect this is similarly jargony to what you've already seen. If
you have question, please ask them and perhaps together we can reveal
how better to describe things. My own use and understanding of
tiddlyspace, tiddlers and the web in general can be quite abstract and
general so I'm not the best guy: I like to talk about free floating
linked tiddlers in multiple representations floating in an open web.
That sounds fancy but unless you're me is probably meaningless.