TiddlyWiki

Raised as a usability problem by 30 people on Hacker News over 15 years (2011–2025), in 26 threads.

People raised many different problems with TiddlyWiki, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.

The newest 31 complaints

Link syntax is reversed from MediaWiki, so users keep linking the wrong text2025-08-19
Gets wonky with many notes and overwrites instead of editing on slow connections2024-01-07
Tiddler box is too small and changing the layout is hard2023-09-18
Saving changes to the single-file version is wonky without a browser plugin2023-04-25
Adding a tiddler needs extra steps; can't tab to the Add button2022-05-26
Modern browsers make it nearly impossible to save edited pages2022-05-17
Editing shows raw monospaced markup in a textarea instead of WYSIWYG2022-04-20
Edits show as saved but the HTML file never gets written, across several saving methods2022-01-26
Alt+left arrow back shortcut does not work in Firefox on Linux2021-06-27
Page is hidden behind an unclear double-arrow control; sidebar covers the screen on mobile2021-06-27
Back button doesn't work when arriving from an external site2021-06-27
Tag popup appears unexpectedly and can only be closed with the mouse2021-03-03
Interface is ugly and hard to use despite themes and plugins2021-03-02
Editing requires clicking around a webpage and typing into a textbox, which is clunky2021-01-14
Unclear how saving works; changes don't update the local file, requiring manual pulls2020-12-27
Commenter finds the HTML5 version's UI huge and atrocious, so they avoid it2020-12-16
Non-linear organization makes it unintuitive and confusing to use2020-07-13
The built-in editor is very poor to write in2020-06-05
UX takes a while to get used to and could be improved2020-02-17
Clicking links opens sub-windows below the page instead of navigating, breaking page structure and bookmarking2020-02-16
Seemed too involved to maintain easily and overkill for the user's needs2018-09-30
Too many storage options shown up front, making it hard to pick one2018-09-30
Tool is inscrutable at first, hard to understand when starting out2018-09-01
Becomes too slow at editing once thousands of notes are imported2018-07-15
Slightly unintuitive at first until customized to your needs2017-08-20
Adding images takes too long and is too complicated when done often2017-02-07
Low contrast and removed links and buttons make things hard to click2017-01-31
Must remember to manually save and copy the file after every edit2015-12-15
Unconventional formatting syntax and opaque terminology are hard to understand2014-12-28
Easy to make wiki setups terribly complicated, so user falls back to plain text2013-05-11
Interface is overly complex; content appears under the TOC and back button breaks2011-08-23