Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 113 posts

Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?

#71

Post by djzidon »

djhworld wrote: post #56

I've jumped around all over the place, I can never settle on a tool and it's really frustrating I've been through * evernote - slow and buggy UX, properietary format * emacs org mode - good but you need buy in to org format, user experience across devices e.g. mobile not so good) * quiver - pretty good, markdown format, but lacking android support * git + markdown files - ok, but a bit finicky, again annoying across…

You could look at MediWiki (same software Wikipedia uses). GitHub flavored markdown can be installed, I know because I've done it. I have it installed on my own domain, therefore accessible across devices...you'll have to look at LaTeX and images, but I'm fairly sure it can be done. Search capability is great!

Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?

#72

Post by noobiemcfoob »

bengotow wrote: post #66

I realize this may not be the place for this comment, but a few of these comments got me thinking. Human memory is squishy, and that's great. You retain facts + feelings that help you make future decisions and everything else is integrated into smaller and smaller summaries until it fades away entirely. I spent years clinging to every experience wanting not to forget anything, and being horrified when I couldn't reme…

I can't echo this sentiment enough. Forgetting is just as important as remembering. Past experience has only marginal value to the present and future and can just as often lead you into stray directions. The number of times having a pinpoint memory of some obscure fact has helped is a handful across decades? A bit of obvious bias: I can't really know all the times knowing something I didn't would have been helpful. But I can recall a substantially large number of times I -- in effect -- remembered too much and it was a hindrance.

Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?

#73

Post by sh87 »

TLDR; [ email + git(markdown + wiki) + google calendar ]

Tried and failed :

* emacs(org-mode)

* plain text files

* markdown files

* tiddlywiki/ mediawiki/bunch of other wikis

* google keep

* one note

* notational velocity

* anki

* evernote

What "works for me (TM)":

I use a separate email just for this. Every new thought, todo, bookmarks, quotes, images of doodles, event, information about people becomes a new email.

Updates are email replies on last email on that subject. Todos are right there in my inbox reminding me each time I open up my email (many times a day). Once/twice a month I go though my email history. Any email with enough content or insight to a "WIP" wiki page in my git repo.

Whenever I find time or feel like the need to research some concept that I left mid way, I go through my queue (my WIP page) of pending items.

If there’s enough content/files/code, it gets its own markdown file and/or directory. Common patterns, get linked via their respective wiki pages. Related topics are back linked and cross referenced.

This setup has worked well for me for almost a year now.

I do not worry about email / git becoming obsolete. Or how I would move my email/git data when I need to switch vendors. I can access it via any device I own or use someone else’s with just a browser. There are backups of my git repo in almost every laptop/desktop I have access to. There's no shortage of client applications for any of these to choose from. And above all... like I said, this system "works for me (TM)".

Something that was not obvious at the start but I do now, is to keep my wiki relatively small. Because the purpose of the wiki is to supplement and complement my brain and its finite resources. I try to keep the gist in mind and offload details and references to this non-degradable store for when I need it. I've deleted/merged more content than I have added. I routinely see stuff added to my queue and deleted because its a rehash of a concept camouflaged as something new. No other system I used did this for me.

I've posted this comment before [1] reposting as I still find it relevant.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20007108

Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?

#74

Post by davchana »

djhworld wrote: post #56

I've jumped around all over the place, I can never settle on a tool and it's really frustrating I've been through * evernote - slow and buggy UX, properietary format * emacs org mode - good but you need buy in to org format, user experience across devices e.g. mobile not so good) * quiver - pretty good, markdown format, but lacking android support * git + markdown files - ok, but a bit finicky, again annoying across…

My issue with TiddlyWiki was that it always get saved as new file when you save it.

Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?

#75

Post by pacifika »

cr0sh wrote: post #45
nikivi wrote: post #11

I probably have the biggest personal public wiki at this point. Over 720 files and 13,000+ lines across all the files. All files: https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge/blob/master/SUMM... The way I did it was by treating the wiki as extension of my brain and having a perfect workflow for editing it at a speed of thought. In my case it's Sublime Text + Alfred + some macros. https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/other/…

For those of us without macs or ios - what would you recommend (if anything) for replacement of Alfred for Windows or Linux? Or is there another kind of application you'd like to be able to use (that may or may not exist yet) in place of Alfred? Would any search system work for that matter? Could a command line system be used (ie - some form of grep perhaps)? What about something like a "google appliance" style searc…

Find And Runn Robot is a very extendible alternative on Windows https://www.donationcoder.com/software/mouser/popular-apps/f...

Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?

#77

Post by masnick »

I wrote more about my Hugo-based personal knowledge base here recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21311156

You can see it at https://maxmasnick.com/kb

Essentially it is a folder of Markdown files with some YAML metadata at the top to define categories. Hugo takes care of rendering the HTML, which is automatically deployed every time I push updates to the ‘master’ branch on GitHub via the GitHub Actions beta. It works pretty well, and allows me to edit on iOS via Working Copy.

Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?

#78

Post by Arsnn »

h0p3 wrote: post #36
nikivi wrote: post #11

I probably have the biggest personal public wiki at this point. Over 720 files and 13,000+ lines across all the files. All files: https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge/blob/master/SUMM... The way I did it was by treating the wiki as extension of my brain and having a perfect workflow for editing it at a speed of thought. In my case it's Sublime Text + Alfred + some macros. https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/other/…

Hey Nikita! It's been a little more than a year since we last spoke: https://philosopher.life/#2018.10.09%20-%20Nikita%3A%20Penpa... . I like the way you've got yours set up. I think we have similar mindsets to reasoning about personal wikis. In case you are interested in hunting around, I've run across some personal wikis larger than yours, but not many. Even my own wiki-epeen is about three times the size of yours…

Nice wiki you got going there. Can you share the other personal wikis you came across? Well in case its fine with the author.. Im curious to see other approaches

Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?

#79

Post by natalyarostova »

bengotow wrote: post #66

I realize this may not be the place for this comment, but a few of these comments got me thinking. Human memory is squishy, and that's great. You retain facts + feelings that help you make future decisions and everything else is integrated into smaller and smaller summaries until it fades away entirely. I spent years clinging to every experience wanting not to forget anything, and being horrified when I couldn't reme…

Some things remain as well. Such as references to where you learned the thing, the ability to pattern match (Oh this is a problem of form X, which is listed in textbooks A,B and C. I don't remember how to solve it, but I used to. Therefore given that I know I'm capable of solving it, as I've done it before, I know the problem type, and I know where to study it, I'm confident to tell you I can solve it in two weeks."

Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?

#80

Post by Aardappel »

I used mind-mappers, until I got frustrated with their scalability, density, and performance. Then I wrote my own: http://strlen.com/treesheets/ (which is more of a "hierarchical spreadsheet" than a mind-mapper, but was designed specifically for my personal knowledge base :)
Post reply on HN