Scientific Research

[Craig in Calgary]

Is anyone aware of any scientific research done or being done that has
something to do with TiddlyWiki? Let me explain.

For a university technical communication course I am taking in
advanced technical documentation and scientific writing, I need to
conduct some unique research in the area of technical communication or
information design then produce a paper on my findings. I have to
build on or springboard from the reputable research of others.
Ideally, I want my topic to be focused on TiddlyWiki or incorporate
TiddlyWiki in some way. Hypothetical examples of prior research I
could work from:
* Who is using TiddlyWikis and why.
* Corporate versus personal adoption rate of TiddlyWiki usage.
* Are TiddlyWiki adaptations too complex for the average user.
* Indirect research could be along the lines of TiddlyWiki being
included in a comparison study of similar technologies for: security,
collaboration, adaptability, distributed content, etc.

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

[alex]

I'm using a TW which i adapt as part of a research project.
the adaption of the tool is part of the process - exploring
creativity.

A suggestion: record syke conversations with Eric, FND, Måns, Tobais,
Wolfgang, Udo. Use a TW to idenfity themes and hold the information.

Alex

[Alex Hough]

Error: *Skype* not "skye"

(You could interview Skye too)

ALex

2009/9/21 alex <r.a....@googlemail.com>

--
http://www.multiurl.com/g/64

[Mat]

Just maybe a decent starting point for leads is already at;

http://www.tiddlywiki.com/#Examples

I also recall seeing other compilations a few years back. I think
tiddlywiki.com contained a list of what was then called "flavors" or
that might have been a list in Mr. Simon Bairds monkeypiratetiddlywiki
(mptw, itself a flavor, I guess) or maybe it was a showcase of TW's
hosted at his tiddlyspot server.

If I understand you right, you have not formulated your academic
'problem' yet. How about conducting a little poll here in the google
group for suggestions, just to give you ideas for a thesis. Since you
wish for it to be *about* TW, I'd assume you wouldn't mind for it to
be valuable for the development of TW itself.

If you're in the hood of the Osmosoft gang, maybe you could ask to
investigate how it has been integrated at BT?

If you, in deed, hope for it to have some effect on very TW design,
then doing something in collaboration with the actual central
development team (the decision makers) is probably a good idea.

Or maybe some of the generous plugin developers in here have some
questions that would help them in their generous efforts?

Personally I think your suggesed question "Are TiddlyWiki adaptations
too complex for the average user." is interesting and would love to
throw TW at some interface ease-of-use design expert. Or how about a
quantative and comparative study, introducing new users to TW and
other 'competing' personal CMS alternatives and evaluating e.g ease-of-
use, desired features, intended applications etc etc?

Sorry, you got me ranting ;-)

/Mat

[AlfonsoReyes]

This is a good example of TW used for research.

http://deferentialgeometry.org/

***********************************************************

On Sep 20, 12:58 pm, Craig in Calgary <craig.prich...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Anthony Muscio]

Sorry, No personal knowledge of research on tiddlywiki, but it is a laudable idea.

I am an IT specialist of many years, yet this is the first "community" I have wholeheartedly embraced. I suppose I must be a super user, and it is true my attempt to get average Joe user (Dad and Girlfriend) has been slow, but I persist.

One of the problems you face may come about because of a feature of tiddlywiki. That is I love the web 2.0 nature of tiddlywiki that I have developed my own personal information manager and database. The best thing is as I see a need, I develop it further. eg; I was finding collections of tasks not really beloning to my day to day tasks and not beloning to full projects, or reference records, each of which I have developed systems to manage, so I am developing "subjects" I can use to collect disparate information together. The problem with this is I will possibly never have a "canned" tiddlywiki I test/give to others, the strength of tiddlywiki is this self managed development environment, which I expect remains with many individuals. TiddlyWiki's I own remain personal tools, so the "research" may need to address individual uses as much as when deployed to teams/organisations.

Just some info that may help.

TonyM

If you have not found an easy way to do it with TiddlyWiki, you have missed something.
www.tiddlywiki.com

[dickon]

The TiddlyManuals project which is supported by Jeremy Ruston at
Osmosoft, Jon Lister, and Chris Dent at Peermore via TiddlyWeb may get
close to your question.

We are using TW to develop a radical approach to "treatment
manualization" in psychiatric/psychotherapeutic treatments for
chaotic, complex high risk youth. Built in to our developing manual
are validated outcomes meaures, but the "acid test" which is soon to
come is whether we can convince practitioners that our highly
interactive Wiki-based"workbook" is practical and helpful to them as a
replacement for the bits of paper, serendipity, and 'play-your-
hunches' approach that I am afraid many young people in our target
group have been served with over the years.

Part of the project is precisely driected at introducing scientific
research methods to a field of work that to date has remarkably little
robust evidence for "what works for whom"... the project is supported
from a scientific/academic side by input from UCL (Prof Peter Fonagy,
Freud Memorial Professor of Psychoanalysis) and the Anna Freud Centre
(a charitable research institute in N London) and has various pilot
projects starting or about to start in NHS and non-statutroy settings
around the UK.

There are many other radical features in the TiddlyManual, not least
that a team using this is empowered to add its own "notes in the
margin" to the centrally-owned and evidence-based material, so that a
distributed network of "attuned" versions of the manual develop (the
features of TiddlyWeb make this possible) which each address slightly
different populations/problem-sets, though using a common framework to
approach these.

The manual in its developing draft format is at:

http://imp.peermore.com/imp/recipes/imp/tiddlers.wiki

feedback is welcomed!

Dickon

[Craig in Calgary]

Thank you all for your feedback and suggestions. All the input is
valuable but not exactly where I am heading. I apologize for not
wording my question better.

I am trying to find a documented research project (published in a
reputable journal) that included TiddlyWiki within the scope of the
research - as the subject of the research or included as one of
several subjects of the research. I do not need to find TiddlyWikis
that have been used to hold the details of a research project.

Examples of published research I can springboard from in which
TiddlyWiki in general or a particular adaptation is scrutinized within
the research:
* the efficacy of following the GTD approach to task management.
* the efficacy of content management systems for personal or corporate
use.
* effective time management strategies for students comparing paper-
based and electronic-based approaches.
* Wikis in general or a particular context of use for wikis.
* Web 2.0 in general or a particular context of use for Web 2.0.
* Collaboration in general or a particular collaboration context, e.g.
corporate, classroom.
* The TiddlyManual project could work if there is some published
research on the project in which the TiddlyWiki adaptation is included
within the research.

Thank you in advance for any further input. All comments are welcome
and appreciated.

[Alex Hough]

Craig

try searching google scholar [1]  and scopus [2]

For the latter you'll need an institutional logon

Alex

[1] http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=tiddlywiki
[2] http://www.scopus.com/home.url

2009/9/23 Craig in Calgary <craig.p...@gmail.com>

--
http://www.multiurl.com/g/64

[dickon]

You are a couple of years ahead of where I hope we are heading with
Tiddlymanuals! We have an outcomes evaluation on how a team might
adapt to using this technology, and whether this will improve outcomes
for the young people it is treating - but we are just setting out on
this, rather than having anything published yet.

Dickon