I've been running a TWiki site on the internet for about a year now at http://twiki.cageyconsumer.com, but to date, virtually nobody besides myself has succeeded at actually editing a TWiki page.

Many people just get hung up when they click on edit and are prompted for a username. If they can be bothered to register after that, they may forget why they were bothering to register in the first place. If they remember that they were trying to edit a page, then their edits get tossed because they're too far gone to be able to comprehend the need to save after they preview the page.

To some extent, this may reflect the shorter attention span of users who find a web site while surfing the web as compared to somebody who needs to participate in an intranet Wiki as part of their job. Exacerbating this is that people come to my web site primarily through search engine hits that bring them to the specific page they're interested in rather than to the front page of the Wiki.

The bottom line is to come up with ways to minimize the confusion and obstacles users of an internet TWiki encounter when they first want to edit a page.

My first cut at this is just to change the view template to mention that users must register before they can edit a page. There are probably some other things that can be done to help people get started, without necessarily sending them over to TWikiDocumentation.

Other suggestions for helping such users would be appreciated.

-- EliMantel - 14 Apr 2002

Just quick suggestions:

1. You may want skip registering if it bothers your users.
2. Some skins (like KoalaSkin) has "Save without preview" button. See SimplerDefaultTemplates.

-- PeterMasiar - 15 Apr 2002