Talk:TWiki/Archive 1

Archive 1

Software Pre-requisites

It would be useful (IMHO) to have a list of the software that was needed in order to run TWiki. For example, MediaWiki requires MySQL. This would enable people, at a glance, to see if they would be able to run TWiki on a particular box (maybe that old test machine that they have lurking in the corner). Do people agree? If so, does anyone know what the pre-requisites are? Wikikob 09:58, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion, I added the server requirements to the Releases section -- Peter Thoeny - 05:44, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Picture?

Can we get the obligatory screenshot? - Samsara (talk • contribs) 17:23, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, added -- PeterThoeny 03:42, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Origin of name

What does the T stand for in TWiki?

TWiki is short for TakeFive Wiki, the name of the company where its founder Peter Thoeny worked. Peter first named the platform T5Wiki, then shortened it to TWiki (pronounced twee-kee).

TWiki is capitalized unusually to deliberately distinguish it from Twiki, which is a character from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (TV series). They are both pronounced identically, however.

--SteffenPoulsen 20:56, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Powerful and NPOV

• Coasttocoast removed "easy to use, flexible,powerful" because it "sounds like an ad" - fair enough
• Peter Thoeny restored "powerful" because "that's what TWiki is among the wikis"
• Satori Son removed the "powerful" adjective "per WP:NPOV" - is this a case of NPOV?
• Peter Thoeny plans to restore "powerful", but wants to make sure that it is in line with NPOV

Lets wait for a few days to see if anyone who knows TWiki (e.g. uses TWiki at the workplace) objects to the idea that TWiki is powerful.

-- PeterThoeny - 08:24, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree it is indeed very powerful - but I also acknowledge the NPOV aspect. An alternative approach could be to use another phrase like i.e. "highly customizable and extendable, with SQL-like features at the ordinary users disposal" in an attempt at using a few words to explain _why_ it is powerful? -- SteffenPoulsen 09:24, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I think if PeterThoeny wants to use the word "powerful" it should be counterpointed by ", but problematic". Considering how many times the Twiki devs have burned their userbase in the last few months by releasing versions that aren't readily backwards compatable I'm suprised that there hasn't been a mention of their poor track record for improvements. Twiki sounds great right off the bat but to a systems admin it's really a disaster decorated with bells and whistles. Granted, I'm saying that on a mediawiki powered site so I'm not gonna pretend what I just said is in any way NPOV because it's not... -- Cverlo 21:17, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the candid feedback. We are listening. What release are you referring to? What kind of problems did you have? I suggest to bring your feedback forward in the Support web so that the TWiki community can take actions. In our TWiki mission we have "protect corporate investment (topic contents) from data corruption and incompatible changes". I do my best in fullfilling this goal, but frankly we have had some exceptions I am not too happy about, such as plugin API changes in TWiki 4.0 that made it difficult for TWiki site owners to upgrade in a timely manner. Fortunately we have now a solid decision process in place that will make things better going forward. -- PeterThoeny 22:47, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Here's my contention: The Twiki developers do not have the same degree of dependence on their product that other projects (namely, Mediawiki) has to theirs. The problems encountered in Twiki 4 occured because Twiki acted like a software company; Mediawiki doesn't make those mistakes because Mediawiki isn't the focus of Mediawiki; Wikipedia is the focus of Mediawiki. It's product built to support an ongoing project which makes the developers much more conscious of the consequences of their decisions. Understand: bad design choices GET PEOPLE FIRED, both the developers who make those choices, and the Admins who choose to use the product. After what I've seen from Twiki 4 I wouldn't recommend Twiki to an admin purely because I can't TRUST Twiki with MY job; I don't do their work but I can get fired for their mistakes. 12.104.195.32 15:31, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with your assessment. TWiki is one of the few open source projects with a detailed mission statement. This guides the developers and, unlike other open source projects, results in a very focused product with detailed documentation. Look for example at the TWiki history where you can see that focus. Or look at the "parked and not accepted items" in 4.1 release to see on what criteria our decisions are based on. Unlike in a commercial product, you as a user can influence the project if you get involved with the growing TWiki community. Unless I see specifics on what anonymous 12.104.195.32 is missing in the TWiki project I have to categorize this as FUD. -- PeterThoeny 19:19, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not keen on the useage of the word "powerful" either, as that's a relative trait. If TWiki is "powerful", what does that make Google, or MediaWiki? Instead, this page should state, factually, what makes TWiki unique and/or better then other comparable products (features, ratio of downtime/stability, support, hardware requirements etc.). After those are listed, let the reader decide if it is powerful or not. -- Oberiko 22:10, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Geez, what you folks think doesn't matter in the slightest. Report what the independent "experts" say... surely this software been reviewed and written about? (If it hasn't, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia). Did the reviewers on the whole call it "powerful", "problematic", neither, or both? Let's get some quotations and citations into the article instead of arguing about it here. --kingboyk 14:13, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

The trouble with the word powerful is that it is highly subjective: how do you measure power? What may be better is to use the phrase "extensible", which is something that you can quantify. Then somewhere else you could have a page 'comparison of wiki tools'. SteveLoughran 18:48, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

This article reads like an advertisement....

I use TWiki at work, and think it's useful, but when i went to read this article for more information, i find that it reads very much like a product advertisement.

There's alot of mention of its flexibility and general uses, but not much about basic installation guidelines, how it works, TWiki vs Other Wikis, scope for improvement and constructive criticism. These are things i'm much more interested in reading from a user's perspective - i can get the promotional stuff from the TWiki website :) vanillabeach 206.165.101.124 16:01, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

This article is nothing more than an advertisement. We have been using twiki for several months at our company which operates in large parts of western europe and parts of Asia... <Negative info removed which was not relevant to improving the article. — Satori Son> The article mentions load balancing and caching, both of which are virtually non-existent in stock twiki. <Negative info removed which was not relevant to improving the article. — Satori Son> If you tag along with the community for a while, you will notice a huge amount of disarray, to the point where further technical progress has halted. Core developers are walking away. The article mentions nothing of this, which is not strange given that it is entirely written by the twiki people themselves. Very much an advertisement indeed. (anonymous, because I am under NDA). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.109.141.160 (talk • contribs) 12:01, July 8, 2008 (UTC)

If there is criticism of the subject that has been published by reliable, third-party sources, then this article should contain it. Otherwise, the info does not meet the requirements of WP:Verifiability and should not be in the article.

Can you provide citations to reliable sources for the information above? — Satori Son 21:19, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I do not know whether their own site counts as reliable. If you go over there, and click on their 'codev' folder and check for recent changes, you will find various pages discussing the problems. Currently, the top most one is at http://www.twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/TWikiRelease04x02x00Comments?rev=12 for example. You don't have to look hard for more. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.109.141.203 (talk) 20:23, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Wow, interesting read, but unfortunately it's a blog (albeit a blog on the subject's own website), and blogs are rarely sufficient to meet the standards of WP:V and WP:RS. Specifically, Wikipedia requires references that are "reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy."

If any of this gets picked up by an industry news organization, however, it's fair game for the article. — Satori Son 20:37, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

In that case, most of the article should be deleted, as it is based on either the project site or sites of companies that market this product. But maybe i don't know the subtleties of WP:V and WP:RS, and it is ok as it is now. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.109.141.244 (talk) 21:40, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

You're right, of course, that this article is very poorly sourced and needs quite a bit of work. But I will say that the verification requirements for negative information are more stringent than for positive or neutral info. I believe that's primarily for liability reasons. — Satori Son 21:58, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Fork 2008

For what it is worth, it seems there is a fork going on with most of the active community leaving twiki ([1]). I don't know if this is worthy to be mentioned in this article. --80.101.112.149 (talk) 14:14, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I think this should be mentioned, preferably near the beginning of the article - it's a huge step, and the 'real' twiki has come out of this as very much the minority - the entire community has moved on. 121.73.57.198 (talk) 15:49, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I refactored the TWiki article based on WP:SOAP (no place for advertisment by forkers) and WP:NOT#JOURNALISM (no first-hand news reports). FWYW, 155 contributors agree with the new TWiki.org code of conduct, and 7 disagree (see Terms of use report) -- User:PeterThoeny - 07:01, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I have reverted the previous edit and reinstated the content regarding the fork. Just because it's recent history doesn't make it any less relevant, and therefore is't definitely not WP:SOAP. The list of users you linked to is either incomplete or incorrect - see the IRC logs here and for the several days following. There are far more than 7 of your users disagreeing with this, so unless you can provide more compelling evidence I think I have to disagree with you here. It has also been noted in IRC that you have been tampering with the data on that site, so any evidence there is inconslusive. Finally, your edit is for personal gain only - this is not a propaganda page for your product. All the information should be available, not just your opinion. Deleting the fork information makes the article highly POV-specific. 130.195.86.40 (talk) 07:20, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

And I reverted the biased edits by 130.195.86.40, this is not the place to advertise for a fork -- User:PeterThoeny - 07:33, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

This is not an advertisement, it's objectively written by several contributors. If you feel it should be removed, discuss it in talk. Edit reverted, and I have updated your request for a page lock. 130.195.86.40 (talk) 07:40, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I asked that the TWiki article should be locked, there is no sense in edit wars. -- User:PeterThoeny - 08:07, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Agreed - definitely no sense in wars over it, but it would be nice if we could have an objective discussion here. Can you clarify why you feel this topic isn't worthy of inclusion? The way I see it, you're removing highly relevant content because it reflects badly on you personally.

Note that I do not have anything to do with TWiki or the relevant community myself - I'm just trying to correct what I see as highly biased edits. 130.195.86.40 (talk) 08:26, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I am one of the people who forked. I have stayed away from this wikipedia page as far as possible, because I am by definition not an objective source of information. Just as Peter isn't. It is worrying to see how he reverts edits made by others, but not at all a surprise given the reasons we are forking in the first place. Anyway, what i wanted to point out is two writeups by people not involved in the fork that might provide some more insights: TWiki's hunt for cash fractures its community and TWiki.net Kicks Out All TWiki Contributors.

Good luck, wikipedians, in finding the right balance in this article! I hope sense will prevail and Thoeny's inflamatory and embarrasing behaviour will not determine the future of this lemma. --Gmc2000 (talk) 08:55, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Other Forks

I've split the section that was previously called "Other forks and projects inspired by TWiki" into two sections - "Other forks of TWiki" and "Projects inspired by TWiki". The reason for this is because the two concepts are very different. Someone forking a project is generally not inspired by the original project, indeed lack of inspiration by the direction or management of a project can be a signification motivator for forking.

I was the person who forked TWiki to form O'Wiki, and despite disagreements with Peter at the time, I wish him and his Core Team (whom he appears to have locked out) the best of luck in the future. I abandoned the O'Wiki fork in the end due to the code not being amenable to change due to too many bad design decisions imposed by the project leader upon the twiki core team. (It was quicker to write something useful instead)

I've also added a few small points of history to the page, largely because I was there at the dawn of TWiki :) -- Michael Sparks, 30 October 2008