Is it time to have separate groups in TiddlyWiki? A User, not Developer, perspective

[Alfonso Arciniega]

First thing first: Tremendous thanks to everyone that contributes to this group. The amount of time and effort seems incredible to me. Keep up the great work!

Now, I am not a developer. I am a user. I am an engineer with very limited knowledge of TW coding. I do not have too much time to learn TW because I work 8 hours a day and have a family to attend afterward. At the most, I try very hard to catch up with the hundreds of new posts every week. It would take more than an hour a day to get familiar with the content of each new post. I am feeling the pain (i.e. very frustrated) because I cannot get up to speed with all the great postings.

I strongly suggest to the community to separate TW into several groups. I know we have a Developers group, though many of developing posts are posted in this group. For example, we can add two additional groups called: Issues and Production (final names can be decided later). The content of each group could be:

TW Developers: Core TW, Code, Plugins, Macros, Applications, etc. (discussion and requests for new stuff)

TW Issues: Errors, User issues, Network issues, etc. (discussion and requests for fixing stuff)

TW Production: Final posting of Core TW, Plugins, Macros, Apps, etc. (no discussion here, this group is for users mostly, not developers)

Of course, there will be pros and cons to this separation. However, this will benefit users enormously. Users will be able to get the good stuff without the need to go over hundreds of posts; they will find solutions faster without having to ask the same question over and over again, overpopulating this group; TW family would expand faster by attracting users with limited knowledge of coding (that do not have too much time to learn the intricacies of TW language).

I understand I am writing for developers mostly, and suggesting this change has probably been discussed (and rejected?) more than once in the past. I am asking to reconsider, and think primarily about expanding the number of users. I believe TW has become mature enough to become a starting point of several excellent applications. We have plenty of end-user application ideas though we spend too much time tunning up code for our own use instead of creating generic applications or off-the-shelve solutions that may need small tunning.

The following is an example of how a concerted developer effort may attract many more users: the Cardo TW app, which has its own Google group by the way. It is a good app though not great. I still cannot adopt it in its current status (still using mGSD Classic TW). There is only one developer for this app which apparently is busy and does not have the (free) time to carry on with further development. IMHO, there should be several developers collaborating and making this a great app that can put TW on a different level, much better than other commercial applications (think: Remember the Milk, Things, Wunderlist, Trello, etc.)

From the developer perspective: Developers will be able to create wealth by charging to end Users for services (fine tuning, debugging, creating systems, etc.) on the TW applications. Think something similar to the Linux family of operating systems, of the IBM network service systems. The only app that I know that makes some money is Quine. There should be many more. You guys need to make money; it's not a bad thing. A Production group (not necessarily a Google group, it could be a completely separate web site) would help to test the markets where the potential users find apps they can use. Users won't need to peruse the whole David's https://dynalist.io/d/zUP-nIWu2FFoXH-oM7L7d9DM to find something usable for their needs.

Well, I could go on and on, though I must go back to (paid) work for now.

Regards,

Alfonso Arciniega

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Alfonso

The main problem with this is WHO would form the different groups?

1 - There are not that many active people here --- count them over a month & you will see my point.

2 - I don't think that the different areas of TW involvement are neat such that it could unfold into the different areas you suggest.

Being a bit more positive, I DO think that branching into viable alternate paths is possible. Just this week Danielo's NOTESELF established its own forum. In the case of NoteSelf I can see how it will be viable because its a vibrant fork of TW that has a considerable following already.

I can't, at the moment, think of anything else that could do that viably.

Best wishes
Josiah

[Jed Carty]

I think that Josiah is right about this. I am told that a lot of people use the things that I make but at the moment there is about enough coming in regularly to support server costs and domain registration.

[TonyM]

Josiah,

In fact it is possible, I have the solution, and I reached out to you to join me in reviewing it.

I am not trying to sell it into the community yet because Its needs refining and a strategy.

Regards

Tony

[TonyM]

Alfonso,

I know exactly where you coming from and have a solution. Such divided groups need to exist under a single network. One need not miss anything but one can subscribe or hide material form focused groups, share across groups and have an avenue to publish curated results out to the Internet where Google Searches will be more productive.

Regards

Tony