Learning from Roam / Steps to making TiddlyWiki the default notetaking tool

[David Gifford]

Hi all

I wrote the following comments for another thread, but I don't want to derail that thread and am starting a new one.

1. OVERCOMING PREJUDICE AGAINST ROAM

I don't know why there are so many negative comments towards Roam in this Google Group. They, and their users, are constantly improving Roam, and it can do way more than even 6 months ago. They are not resting on backlinks as their only feature (not that they were doing that even a year ago, when they had filters, graphs, two columns, etc). So the comments just feel like they are generated out of envy of their success.

Also, Roam doesn't seem to be overhyping itself. The Roam USERS are the ones posting accolades on Twitter, and the Roam account (or Connor's account) retweets them. Which is no different from what @TiddlyWiki does. And other influencers are creating courses to cash in on people wanting to learn it. And YouTubers are hoping for hits on their pages by creating videos about Roam. Everything just snowballed for Roam, like it did for Notion in 2019. And like it could for TiddlyWiki.

I think complaints about Roam are a waste of time. The question is, what can we do, positively, to learn from what they did, so that TiddlyWiki gets the attention and recognition it deserves? Knowing full well that we have a great open source product, how can we get and retain users?

2. LESSONS FOR TIDDLYWIKI

I have a feeling that most of the people who are on this forum, myself included, are not the people best suited to actually promote TW, and that we need win over some extroverted influencer types, to come up with better onboarding materials, and then promote the heck out of TW. Just remember how much attention we got when Anne-Laure LeCunff wrote a couple blog posts on TiddlyWiki last Spring, and I merely tagged Roam Research's @ username a few times on my tweets when I debuted Stroll? Imagine what we could do with a few well-produced video tutorials and highlighting of TW's capabilities, and testimonials from influencers. By people who know how to express it in non-technical, non-absract terms.

Someone should convince Nat Eliason or someone like him to write and promote a paid web course for TiddlyWiki, or ask people to create more video tutorials for TW on Youtube. Top candidates: Video walkthroughs for Timimi and each of the other options for saving. /  Ten great plugins for TiddlyWiki for notetaking / ten for productivity / ten for images / ten for searching / ten for adjusting the UI, etc

Rather than grumbling about Roam we should just figure out the right strategy to make TiddlyWiki popular and get someone to do it for us. For free. They do the work, and get paid by the hits on their Youtube videos and blog posts, or in the case of the courses, the fee they charge for the course. And if they make it look as if they 'discovered' TiddlyWiki even though it has ben around for years, and even though we approached them rather than them discovering TiddlyWiki, let them. Who cares. Let them get their ego stroked. As long as TW gets the press it ought to.

We have had exposure at times, but a deficient onboarding experience held us back ("wait, I have to read through documentation about numerous saving options before I can even use this on my computer?"). If we could get the onboarding experience right, then get key people to get us the exposure, TiddlyWiki would have its day.

Thoughts?

[Ray Vermey]

May i chip in as a complete and utter NONO?

I discovered TW some six years ago. Then went over to Evernote and quit that recently for another tool.

Now i work again with TW5 and have a very very hard time to learn it.

Man is this some difficult piece of work to master.

Reminds me of me learning Unix 20 years ago.... same horrible learning curve... but now i am a Linux teacher :-)

So i learn a very small bit of TW5 every day. Piece by piece the magic unravels itself.... but did i say how hard it is?

I am an outgoing kind of guy and surely want to help promote TW, realy!

What i notice is the lack of structured tutorials... you have to look all over the place to find them.

I had tremendous progress with 10 minutes online with Huber Simon (THANKS!!)

There is a Discord group with no or little response.... A Reddit group kind of alive.

But as a newcomer you are in my opinion on your own.

Yes there are some good youtube videos, and they help you to get started.

But getting started leads you to more questions.... that is the power and beauty of TW.

What *I* need is a more step by step approach.... sometimes i read TW lingo and my brain goes: <KRANK, brain fried, core dumped>

So i ask and ask again, sometimes indeed get an answer, more often not but i keep going,

That gives me tiny bits of progress every day....

So.... i am willing to help setup a tutorial (i am no influencer but extrovert enough :-) )

I am the ideal nono noob user who can learn and then can teach.

So yes i would like to help.

Maybe in some kind of online meeting ??

Let me know your thoughts, please.

Ray

Op vr 5 mrt. 2021 om 14:56 schreef David Gifford <dgif...@crcna.org>:

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[David Gifford]

Hi Ray

Your situation reminds me of myself years ago when I wrote "TiddlyWiki for the Rest of Us" for TW classic.

You seem to be using 'nono' as an abbreviation that I am not aware of. Does it mean 'know nothing'? Or something else?

I would definitely say that you should write some tutorials as you learn something new, whether those are blog posts or videos. Every bit helps. I have done this at times on my https://giffmex.org/gifts/documenting.tw.html. So, yes! By all means, let's see what ya got!

And don't be shy about asking for help here in this forum when you get stuck on soemthing new you are learning. I have done that for years, and they haven't come with pitchforks and torches yet to get rid of me because of my constant requests for help. We have a lot of helpful people here who are generous with their time.

Blessings!

[ArchiMark]

Great posts, David! Think your on the right track about having the right people review TW, hopefully, in a positive manner. Agree, this would give a big boost to TW awareness and hopefully, generate more people using it.

Writing this as TW Newb who only discovered TW and other like apps in the past week or so.

Like Ray, I recognized quickly that TW is a great and powerful, useful tool, IF you know how to use it effectively. Also, like Ray, I found trying to get my head around how to use it effectively is another matter and can quickly feel a bit overwhelming in terms of all the 'technical stuff' one needs to know about and comprehend in order to have TW do what you want it to do, even if  you want to rely on all the resources available to customize TW.

I've been watching various TW videos the past week. Most are helpful to a newb to some degree. Watched Francis Meetze's tutorial videos (# 1 & 2) the other day. While his scripts could be a bit tighter, I've found the way he communicates how to navigate and customize TW extremely helpful and understandable to a newb like me. So, will continue to watch more of his videos to try and accelerate my TW learning curve.

I know it will take me some time (but not too long...) to get to a point where I feel very comfortable with TW. But I feel there's a big payoff in doing so. Therefore, willing to put some time and energy to do this.

Best,

Mark

PS.  Thanks! for sharing Stroll. It looked very useful to me so have included it in my TW....

[David Gifford]

Thanks ArchiMark!

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[Ray Vermey]

Maybe we get together online and have a setup session?

Learning and make some plans in promoting TW to get it to a higher level?

I am online all the time, Jitsi is a tool i use often: https://meet.jit.si/TiddlyWiki is active now :-)

Ray

Op vr 5 mrt. 2021 om 21:15 schreef ArchiMark <sreb...@gmail.com>:

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[ArchiMark]

Hi Ray, were you aiming your suggestion at me or ? 

In any event, just saw  your post now....several hours later....

If at me, please note I'm in California, so on PST time, and at work right now...however, either very early mornings or usually over my lunch hour or sometimes my afternoons work.

If you were aiming this at David or someone else, please ignore this post...  :-)

Mark

[Ray Vermey]

I was aiming it anyone who want to join ;-)

Jitsi is a very easy platform to video meet.

Tomorrow i start one again.

Everybody is welcome. Nothing official, just hanging out, learning, making plans, whatever comes up :-)

Ray

Op za 6 mrt. 2021 om 01:05 schreef ArchiMark <sreb...@gmail.com>:

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[ArchiMark]

Thanks for clarifying, Ray.....

Would enjoy joining you sometime, but for me, would likely need to be on a Monday - Friday, my weekends are a bit hectic for various reasons....

Best,

Mark

[bluespire]

I would be interested in chatting about this.

I too feel that TW5 could be a killer app, but I think it needs to be presented to the mainstream in a way that separates itself from all the other note-taking tools. TW5 is very powerful, but is distributed in a very vanilla form. That's great for power the two ends of the user bell-curve; power users, and very light users. The majority of users want something at least as close to what Evernote can deliver. I believe that for TW5 to go mainstream, a polished, customized, version of it should be marketed as an "Evernote clone, but can be self-hosted (privacy), customized, and scripted". Doesn't have to be "evernote clone", choose your poison, but I still think that is the best way to go. Then you will get the mainstream hooked, and the power-users and developers will follow (at least I hope so).

Personally, when I have free time to play with it, I'm trying mold TW5 into a true replacement for OneNote. My major blocker is screen-shots and robust WYSIWYG, that I'm trying to get around with by using CKEditor embedded. If I can figure that out, then I think the sidebar organization (notebook, sections, pages) will be child's play, and then finally I will work on adding OneNote's special handling tabs and text-selection.

[Mohammad Rahmani]

On Sat, Mar 6, 2021 at 7:03 AM bluespire <gswr...@gmail.com> wrote:

I would be interested in chatting about this.

I too feel that TW5 could be a killer app, but I think it needs to be presented to the mainstream in a way that separates itself from all the other note-taking tools. TW5 is very powerful, but is distributed in a very vanilla form. That's great for power the two ends of the user bell-curve; power users, and very light users. The majority of users want something at least as close to what Evernote can deliver. I believe that for TW5 to go mainstream, a polished, customized, version of it should be marketed as an "Evernote clone, but can be self-hosted (privacy), customized, and scripted". Doesn't have to be "evernote clone", choose your poison, but I still think that is the best way to go. Then you will get the mainstream hooked, and the power-users and developers will follow (at least I hope so).

That is a pain! TW in the current form is not suitable for the majority of users! But it is a killer app as you said for many advanced users!

 

 My major blocker is screen-shots and robust WYSIWYG, that I'm trying to get around with by using CKEditor embedded. 

Let me disagree! Lets TW uses a plain editor for text! There are some tools to edit and see the results side by side! Keep it light and simple

 

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[Charlie Veniot]

Yeah, I have to +1 Mohammad's reply.

I use TW5 to create single-page websites and my latest project is using TiddlyWiki as a solution for recording facts about a universe of discourse for database-engineering.

As is, TW5 can be used for note-taking, but the various use cases for TiddlyWiki are really mind-blowing.  TW5 is, to me, a hypertext solutions platform for just about anything.

The more "core" TW5 gets burdened with features applicable to a particular use case, it makes TW5 heavier (not so great) for all the other use cases.

To me, it sniffs like there are enough folk to maybe collaborate on an edition of TiddlyWiki that is EverNote-like?  I think that would be very cool.  (However, just to be clear:  although I think that would be very cool, that is not an edition of TiddlyWiki that I would be interested in at all.  Not to build it.  Not to use it.)

Or just a "recipe" for creating a killer TW5 Note-Taking edition...  (Actually, documented "recipes" for various solutions with TW5 would be awesome.)

ASIDE:  As a WYSIWYG editor, have you tried BJ Tools' Visual Editor?

Cheers and best regards!

[Florian Felix]

I think you have some valid points. Also, I think tiddlywiki will always kind of have its own niche. It is definitely underrated though!
I'm not a webdeveloper, but not tech-averse, and I understand that TW has lots of potential, especially bc there is an active and passionate community around it.
But I think the fact that documentation is kind of all over the place and often-times a bit short makes it hard to get right into TW as a newbie. ofc your toolmap is great and there are lots of efforts but one gets pretty lost in looking up all those plugins and what they do in comparison to each other.
For example, why not have something like a git backed documentation site (like gitbook) where everyone can chip in?
Also, documentation for specific "Editions"/usecases  should be more centrally promoted (how is projectify not listed as a CE actually) , and some more "modern" /clean themes being available from the start . maybe having subforums for certain usecases would be good to promote establishing those.

You are right in the "Roam" hype being actually great for TW. (It's actually a pity, that stroll and Tiddlymaps don't work so well together, but I'll write on the need for a bit more basic and exportable graphing tool elsewhere). I think there's a general trend away from the social media platforms and going "back to the roots", connecting and using standalone websites with the more easy tools developing. (see also indie web)

A specific discourse there is "digital grdening", which anne-laure was contributing, too , and i think tiddlywiki, especially with improving static export capability could do very well there. because it is already a note-taking tool, and a wiki, it is multi-device, and you don't need to spend your whole time in the command line (looking at org-roam, that I'm also looking at). The community could/should cater more to that maybe, as it unifys much of the movement i was talking about. maybe a YT series - digital gardening with tiddlywiki in X steps :) If you hit up tom critchlow and anne -laure (who have mentioned TW specifically) or some other ppl they maybe will promote it, and there also seems a telegram group around the topic where you could seek support.

I think it's a very good fit - these are mostly younger professionals ( in my eyes at least, and in comparison to ppl in the TW community seemingly existing since the web was launched) who don't seem to have much problems setting up own themes with ssg's which will be great when the anounced framework is available. but, that's also why i discovered TW so this interest is wuiute selfish.

Also *cough* google groups is a bit of an hinderance as ppl that TW might want to appeal to gain support - security and open source related devs  use discourse now which is OS for those matters i think ;P

[David Gifford]

@flohit - Projectify was already listed in the Toolmap in the Project management section, but I added it to themes and to Productivity - Misc to give it more exposure in those areas.

[Florian Felix]

i meant the actual tiddlywiki site ;) i don't know but I for once always start with the "official"

[PMario]

Hi,

Projectify is listed: https://tiddlywiki.com/#Projectify%20by%20Nicolas%20Petton .. but only as a plugin. ... IMO it should go to editions too.

-mario

[PMario]

Hi,

I did create a PR: https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5/pull/5548

-m

[Florian Felix]

cool!