The various kinds of TWiki users

Partially factored out of KindsOfTWikiDocUsers (and then partially included back), since one has to identify the various kinds of users before thinking about their needs

While obviously people may not fall neatly into just one of these categories, I've tried to take a first cut at describing the various kinds of users I can think of. Please feel free to edit as well as comment. (Of course.)

• Users...
  • Absolute newbies and casual users:
    • new to wikis in general
    • new to TWiki, but who may have used other wikis (such as Wikipedia or Writeboard) as viewers only
    • new to TWiki who are at least familiar with the idea that wiki topics can be edited
    • who have done some text-editing topics, but are still nervous
  • Having some experience:
    • (also above) new to TWiki, but who may have used other wikis (such as Wikipedia) as viewers only
    • who have done enough editing to be interested in learning how to do a bit more more than just correcting spelling errors and adding comments
    • who need to accomplish something and don't know how to get it done using TWiki
  • Having a comfort level in using TWiki:
    • who are comfortable using the simple TWikiVariables (i.e., the ones that are variables
    • who are willing and able to try playing with the advanced TWikiVariables (i.e, the ones that are really functions) and whatever plugins are installed
  • Experts
    • who can write TWikiApplications
• Installers:
  • trying to install TWiki for the first time
    • having not much experience in web servers
    • having experience in web servers
  • installing TWiki for the nth time
    • installing a new release version
    • installing on a different platform
  • who have installed other wikis such as MediaWiki and come to install TWiki with very different assumptions
  • who have been using Windows and are completely unfamilair with Apache and the UNIX assumptions that underly TWiki
• Administrators: People tasked with administering one or more TWiki installs. One of these may well be the person who did the installation.
• Developers
  • who write TWiki Applications
  • who write plugins
    • who know Perl
    • who code by copy-pasting
  • who fix bugs in TWiki

-- Contributors: MeredithLesly, ArthurClemens

Discussion

Just a few points:

• It's reasonable to assume that virtually all TWiki users are ordinary users, probably at the lower end of the spectrum, given its primary use in the corporate world. Whether this is sufficient for corporation or merely acccepted with a "what can we do?" shrug, I don't know.
• Probably most installs have a single maintainer, although there may be more than one administrator.
• While Dakar is far easier to install than Cairo, it still takes a pretty sophisticated set of skills to do so.
• Only those who have password-access to bin/configure can enable plugins.
• Because of the wide skill range of users, there is no single definition of "user-centric". A power-user, for example, is at the high end of "ordinary users" but is may know nothing about Perl or Apache.

-- MeredithLesly