Ciao all There are parts of this that are also responses to Riz, Matt, Jed & Mark. S.
I'll make a few comments that have bearing on this discussion ... and, hopefully, next steps.This repeats a lot of themes that will be obvious to many on TW but think its useful to especially keep the context very clear: Namely, a HUGE issue is simply the DYSFUNCTIONAL nature of GOOGLE GROUPS. 1 - RIZ is accurate in highlighting that many threads within this group are ALREADY (implicit) steps to documentation and that LEVERAGEING off that by getting those existing worthy threads compacted (explicitly) into... (a) statement of the ISSUE to solve; (b) the SOLUTION; (c) archived in an ORDERED way you can find them = One economical, time sparing, way forward. IMO, THIS approach makes intuitive sense and perhaps has more chance of working than previous documentation efforts. 2a - PART of the issue at (1) is that this GOOGLE GROUP, though good for ongoing discussions, is SERIOUSLY DEFICIENT as an archive. Its EXTREMELY difficult to find relevant posts from the past because there is NO TAGGING of posts used (at the moment) and the search mechanism is VERY CRUDE... 2b - ... further, take this discussion we are having... In the months I have been in this group I have read and commented in several extensive discussions of DOCUMENTATION ISSUES. I have seen people come and go with attempts at addressing them. I have seen people create TW's aimed at helping beginners that then disappear from any awareness they existed. Sustained TRACTION did not happen. I think a large part of that is the MEDIUM for documentation needs to be... (a) sustainable; (b) uses one location / mechanism; (c) exists independent of any one writer; (d) is designed optimally for documentation; (e) is easy for beginners to use. 2c - NOTE: WE, right now, in this very discussion, have not gone back and looked at previous discussions of this topic and cite them because the way the Google Group archive works is TOO UNWIELDY. OUR behaviour also instances the issue--NOT leveraging off what is already discussed and known. Result: Danger of re-creating the wheel. Documentation is the OPPOSITE of this behaviour, its meant to end unnecessary going round things again & again. The medium you are in MATTERS to the outcome. Fact is Google Groups is CRAP at cumulative ORDERED knowledge. I believe that is a BIG part of the cause of the problems TW's users face over "missing documentation". Its not so much it has not been created (missing, as in "never existed"), more that is in BURIED fragments lost & dispersed in Google Group history. 3 - END the RECREATION OF THE WHEEL. The enthusiastic energy that people put into asking questions and replying to them is huge in this group. The good will to help is unrivaled. BUT I see enormous redundancy over time where many questions & issues are VARIATIONS of something asked a ZILLION times before. In short, Google Groups eat their own history. SO documenting what is useful needs, to be sustainable, to be CONTEMPORANEOUS with resolution of issues in the Group, and needs to be saved elsewhere in a well indexed/tagged way. Re-read (1) above. 4 - TWEDERATION. MATT, JED & MARK S. There has been discussion of whether Twederation is an appropriate medium for documentation. Whilst I think it could be eventually be a vehicle to shared documentation I'm very skeptical if it should be the first stop on this. Why? (a) for beginner users, who most need documentation, TWED is not yet integrated enough into basic TW. It's in danger of being CATCH-22 ... "... you can't get to the documentation until you have read the documentation on how to get to it."; (b) it would have to work transparently; such that the new user would need to do virtually nothing to set it up; (c) As far as I understand it, Twederation is not dedicated to documentation alone and all the issues of how you "document documentation" (vital to usage; you must be able to find what relevantly answers ones' queries) are not touched on at all yet. In short there are ... (i) TOO MANY UNKOWNS right now; (ii) It NOT OPTIMAL for beginners as is. So, my conclusion: Though TWED is a really great innovation it's a thing of the far future as far as the documentation issue goes IMO. I feel bringing TWED into this debate without a finished product demoing how it could optimize documentation is muddying the waters. Riz's suggestion of using extant systems like MediaWiki still seems in the right kinda direction. A properly designed TiddlyWiki could also do the job though it would need an update mechanism for contributions and people to maintain it to be sustainable. And that has proven a big issue in the past. I will comment on the USE CASE points that MARK.S raised in a later email. Best wishes Josiah -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tiddlywiki+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to tiddlywiki@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/f0ccf533-c9de-40fc-a434-a96452c26355%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
