Building "TiddlyWiki as a Platform"

[Abraham Samma]

Hello all,

For the past week I've been brainstorming a way to truly transform the TiddlyWiki community into a TiddlyWiki Social Platform that can really supercharge TiddlyWiki's visibility and adoption, as well as help kickstart a new way of sharing and following productive and creative members of the community.

Problem

Currently, the means of distributing, showcasing and managing TiddlyWiki projects are scattered throughout the web (tiddlyspot, github, gitlab) and divorced from the means of providing feedback, discussion (this forum).

While Github has an all-in-one offer of managing a community of contributors and users in a single repository (issues, repo wiki), many of TW's users are end-users and/or end-user programmers who might not prefer to open a github account, or would prefer a simpler and more streamlined way of making an deploying a TW project as in tiddlyspot as well as obtaining feedback and discuss issues (project specific forum).

Solution

I've created a simple wireframe to illustrate the solution: a complete social network framework for tiddlywiki that improves upon the tiddlyspot model. It has 3 main features:

1. An "Explore page" or gallery page that is automatically updated to show off TiddlyWiki projects hosted by users, organised by popularity or genre or use. This page could act as a "social feed" for TiddlyWiki projects
2. Clicking on a project in the "explore page" takes you to the TW page that hosts a plugin, blog or what not that you find interesting. I could implement a means for you to "fork" a project directly into your private account (like github, but streamline for TW).
   
3. A "Profile" page can be automatically created for you when you publish a TW project to the network, to talk about yourself and to collate all your TW projects into a single portfolio page. I could add a means for you to customise this page. I think this is a great way of building a name on your TW projects.
4. Killer opportunity: You could also "subscribe" to profiles or specific TW projects to receive push notifications whenever say "Abraham" publishes a new project or updates a plugin page.
   

The main potential benefit gained here is that users who are unfamiliar with platforms like Github will now have an easier to grok alternative to publish and manage wikis online and build a name for themselves using TiddlyWiki.

I had originally envisioned this as an internal tool for Maarfapad. The backend will allow me to quickly build all this over the coming weeks. This is an ambitious project to say the least. I want to know if this forum believes it is worth building this as an open tool for everyone to use? Do you find it useful? Please let me know.

Attached below is an ascii wireframe summarising the proposed solution.

This was all inspired by another thread about TW as a platform.

[TonyM]

Abraham,

Thanks for your contribution. I will read your ideas deeply when I next have the opportunity.

Tony

[Mat]

Abraham... you're in deed on to something huge, and those applications are a big part of what so far has been referred to as TWederation (or perhaps TiddlyWiki federation)! This is what I've been nagging about for a few years now. 

...and, in fact, you're about 3-4 days away from seeing it implemented!

...because I am, currently building almost exactly what you're talking about, even down to the terminology, on top of Jeds underlying mechanisms (Bob and TWederBob); a subscriptions system and a gallery display. And once we have more than one server there will be twCards, i.e a kind of identity card which we (mostly Jed) developed alreadyy several months ago for the first rendition of TWederation (a project that didn't scale well). Jed even made a wizard to create such twCards.

Now, you may be more interested in doing this for Maarfpad. No problem - this is all front end stuff so it can be transferred. In fact, you're more than welcome to pick up the very things I've created and tweak it for your own purposes. But, better yet, I would love to cooperate and develop this along with others. Jed is mostly focussed on the backend stuff and my focus is on UI. One major ambition is to eventually be able to use this very "platform" itself for the development of TW and TW-applications.

But, may I ask that you do something: To not miss out on good ideas, may I ask that you think about the things you would want to do and how to do them as much as you can before I show what I've done? That way you can more easily point out flaws in my implementation, i.e without having first been influenced by my design choices.

Jed and I are doing this for the benefit of the community because we've "seen the light", i.e that TWederation will radically change the whole TW project. But it is clear that friendly user interfaces are critical so this project needs all the brain power it can get. I believe the things I'm working on (fully dependent on Jeds TWederBob plugin and overall great support) will be a "wedge" to get people to start to use this. Time will tell...

<:-)

[Abraham Samma]

Hi Mat,

I've actually been discussing with Josiah about Bob and Twederation. I am glad there are others who think this is worth the time and effort. And of course, everything should be for the betterment of the community.

Our primary concerns seem to have converged very closely so I'd be more than delighted to see what you've created and offer suggestions and PRs if I am able.

My only problem is the fact that Bob et al implementations depend on Nodejs. I'd prefer to keep things in a standalone file and I have reason to suspect a lot of ordinary users that I am targeting evidently find the single file form of tiddlywiki easier to understand and use.

Here's how I view the problem: my model is actually more concerned with streamlining the distribution network for personal projects and plugins, rating them and easily adding them into your wikis hosted in your account and vice versa. My model is more centralised (guilty as charged) and is more akin to a "product hunt" clone crossed with an App store (with the profile page being the store front for some user).

Your implementation is more like a separate app that deserves it's own space to grow, partly because it's decentralised nature might make it incompatible with Maarfapad.

However, all this won't matter much if there isn't enough interest to justify this project. I am running lean here so I want to minimise waste and not commit too much resources to building something that nobody would want.

Thanks for your interest. Looking forward to seeing the TW federation live!

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Abraham wrote ...

all this won't matter much if there isn't enough interest to justify this project

This is something that Jed too has often commented on.

I think its worth saying my point of view on this.

I think its a Catch-22 at the moment.

There are not enough vocalising people (NOT the same as disinterested) because until its running full steam it can't generate them.

Another way: If you do well, you get the feedback you need after you have done the work that the feedback was needed for.

Best wishes
Josiah

[Abraham Samma]

A "fake it till you make it" strategy? 😁

[TonyM]

Abraham et al,

I prepaired a nice respince to you but lost it on my mobile. I think what you propose would be an effective way to publish wikis that demonstrate focused solutions. By having a front end it is better than tiddlyspot whick also has great demos but you need know the address of the wiki first.

I do not think we should be too worried about following related goals. When I first raised the tiddlywiki as a platform I was more interested in promoting the idea that it is a platform because it describes it better than the name alone. If you too can promote its nature as a platform on your actual platform I would appreciate it.

My own plan is to build a community site that provides a central resource, an index or database to all things tiddlywiki. This would include every possible resource, angle, edition, resource example.

However I wont be hurrying this as I am keen to help support different approaches and viewpoints.

My particular interest is dividing the tiddlyverse into its components and making each relatable to each other to name a few editions examples plugins macros savers servers css .... You could call it a database of multiple registries.

If however you see my prototype site at colabteam.net/tiddlywiki you will see other ideas.

The key to getting this working is to embed and link to resources such as the one you are proposing including guiding people to such resources.

Regards
Tony

[TonyM]

Post script

The short name for tiddlywiki as a platform is I suppose the tiddlyverse.

Regards
Tony