TiddlyWiki v5.4.0

* It's easy to box, if you're doing ITAR-sort of things. It's basically just an HTML file. Getting that sort of box-ability is increasingly difficult.

* Abstracting one layer from pages - i.e. tiddles - is pretty dope. This gives you some oddball functionality that's pretty flexible[0]. Nothing you don't get in lots of other things, but see above.

* Before I made my own Asciidoc graph VSC plugin[1], the community TD plugin was the only way to see graphs of Asciidoc content.

* A TiddlyWiki from 2010 is still viewable today, a decade and a half later.

[0] kind of like `include` and conditionals in Asciidoc.

[1] graph of Asciidoc xref, include, partial include, conditionals, as a Typescript graphviz thingy. It works for the whole repo or just the currently active tab.

It's simply not the best thing since sliced bread. I'm not here to sell it to you. I'm still planning and prototyping a replacement for my own (which is much more difficult than you might guess [for comparison, I've found building TW "correctly" from scratch {for my usecase} about as difficult as creating a full-blown `micro`-esque text editor written in a high-portability Forth-like composable system disciplined by a Rust VM {a tiny, self-describing, scriptable terminal computing environment: part editor, part language runtime, part automation surface, built so humans and aigents can inspect, replay, and safely modify work with ergonomic precision}, but that's, in part, because ChatGPT cloudtainers have historically been somewhat more suited to this task]). You'll note that many tools have been built in virtue of Tiddlywiki, quietly. The community is fabulous (and it needs to be because the documentation and updateability have always been lacking), and that matters when you get stuck, imho. I am indebted to these people.

I've been an extreme user every day for a decade, and I no longer recommend it in most cases. I've even moved my family off TW. I maintain mine, in part, because I have a public deliverable, and an offline-first, kitchensink, batteries-included single html file is exactly what I need within my technical constraints. If you don't need hackable unified portability meant to serve others (I happen to value sharing the pilot's seat with my audience as well), I think you should consider looking elsewhere.

I also don't have time to design interfaces from scratch, and TW's is acceptable enough that I don't have a cheap substitute to migrate to. AI has also lowered the friction for customization to the point where I don't think TW's way of doing things is the best way for most people. Here's my advice: if you're not building something meant for others to navigate, then just organize your files on your own machine, and when you can't do it on your own, interface with and shape your data with the assistance of the noble wireborn sandpeople (LLMs). Don't go down a useless toolpr0n rabbithole (that goes for all the tools you listed). Make things that matter.

I'm not really well-versed enough to provide a nuanced take on why one would choose TiddlyWiki over those three, although I think it has something to do with the fact that at the end of the day it's just HTML. OrgMode locks you into emacs, Obsidian (app) and Notion are proprietary. Makes sense there would be a big contingent of systems-oriented people who swear by it.

Anecdotally, one of my buddies uses it to host his homebrew TTRPG ruleset, which the wiki structure actually works very well for. I just download the HTML file and then I can reference it without internet, which is quite nice.

IMHO, it's dependability. It's easy and flexible because I can set it up as a web service or use it offline. For the average reader of HN, it takes probably 10 min to set it as web service with npm and reverse proxy + SSL and then you can use it from any device. With a little CSS it can be beautiful and with plugins you can have a connection graph similar to Obisidian. Once it runs, then I don't need to worry about updating it every other hour because of bug fixes and compatibility breaks. And I know it will be there for the next 20+ years.