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Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

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Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#151

I can second the recommendations i've read here. My approach to knowledge management has been super simple. Everything is in git, in a big directory structure i've organically grown over time. I have so many notes.. 7 to 8 thousands of them. Keeping it in git has allowed me flexibility to use it how i see fit. Sometimes i'm in emacs/nevom. Most the time i'm in sublime text because I have workspaces per project/concep…

When I was on Android, I used Markor for text editing and Termux for command line git.

For iOS, I now use Working Copy for git commit/push/pull, and Obsidian to edit text, and I like Obsidian's interface a lot for making quick Markdown edits.

I believe Obsidian has an Android version as well, but I have not used it. I'm not sure if there is an Android version for Working Copy but there may be similar GUI git apps.

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#152
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same in the US.

I vaguely recall this being part of a tit-for-tat thing between China and the anti-Chinese. There have been movements to restrict Chinese access to FOSS, because forking FOSS lowers Chinese dependence on the West, along with (ironic) accusations that the "authoritarian" Chinese are limiting access to Western tech products. I thought there was some sort of legislative or judicial outcome that came out of it, but no lu…

TianYancha is a corporate data aggregation website, it has nothing to do with FOSS. Your post is such a clumsy attempt to steer the conversation into Anti-Americanism/Westernism. Like really blatant lol.

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#153
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the opposite. Being forced to consider hierarchical categorisation leads to a more powerful system in practice. It helps me create a mental reference to the item being stored. And it often causes me to see a better way to form an item in the first place — eg maybe this note is really two notes, maybe this idea can actually just be discarded, etc. Or, on rare occasions, a new item doesn’t fit anywhere (but is i…

Hierarchy doesn’t make sense if you care about multiple dimensions, which I often do with notes. Sometimes I want to look at all notes relating to c++, sometimes everything related to a personal project. Directories don’t support that without symlinking everything that mentions c++ into a folder for that.

Hierarchy can do that too, once you allow a single file to exist in multiple hierarchies at once. Think of database, we have a single table, yet we have a lot of different indexes to search on.

We could do the same, either with symlinks or hardlinks

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#154
Personal Knowledge Management. I expected something different.

Let's say I'm researching how to get into IRL streaming right now. So I'd make a topic, "IRL Streaming". In there I'd like to put links to videos, links to documents/documentation/tutorials/guides/howtos. I'd also like to take notes.

And in the end I would've learned this topic. Maybe I'd create a sub-topic in there, to research "SRT and SLS vs RTMP".

People claim it's like a Obsidian clone. Looking at the Obisidan website it says it's a tool that helps you write a book.

This however calls itself PKM (short). I guess they're related, from looking at the screenshots, but not really what I'm looking for, I think.

I don't want to do what the top comment suggests, folders with files. No I want a web app that I can access from anywhere and where I can dump links and notes to and about resources categorized by topic. Reading the readme of siyuan-note it does seem to be able to do this.

Only 1 question, does it support multiple users? So I can host it for my town's community.

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tagging is a strictly more powerful tool than hierarchies, at least with same amount tags vs directories/categories, because an item can be tagged using multiple different tags, but can only be in one directory, unless you create duplicates or symlinks or whatever.

I really like tagging but somehow the concept could never become central to any filesystem: - I believe BeOS tried, - MS tried with WinFS but cancelled it in Windows Vista, - I am sure some cloud storage service bet on it but can't cite any. Actually tagging is probably mainly successful in cases where we can reliably automate the tagging such as email or photos.

Sharepoint tries to push people towards tags, but doesn't always succeed.

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#156

I keep seeing these note-taking tools pop up again and again. I am heavily invested into Logseq already and the new database version is coming out soon. Unless these tools provide import and export utilities to convert your notes between the most popular applications like Logseq and Obsidian, only new users will use them and people with very few notes who can put in the time to move.

What is the benefit of the database version? I like that the backend is in text files. I guess there could be some performance/compression benefits to be had, but given the amount of writing a mortal is likely to do over a lifetime, I am not immediately sold on the idea.

I believe the main goal is improved speed for huge vaults.

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tagging is a strictly more powerful tool than hierarchies, at least with same amount tags vs directories/categories, because an item can be tagged using multiple different tags, but can only be in one directory, unless you create duplicates or symlinks or whatever.

Everything is a hierarchy, even the tags in your mind do belong under some tree/node like imagination. Tag is essentially just what you described "duplicates or symlinks or whatever."

This isn't really true. Even mature, sophisticated attempts at making hierarchical classification systems (e.g. the UDC[0]) don't claim to have created a system where each document gets a unique leaf on a tree, and indeed instead attempt provide some syntax for adding additional metadata into its "nodes," i.e. the nodes become the sum of their tags.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Decimal_Classificati...

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#158

Looks cool, but as I have been on this knowledge management / productivity journey like everybody. Here are my findings: If you are reasonably comfortable with computers / Unix. - You need to first rely on a directory structures, filenames, plaintext, lists and maybe markdown. Stick with a "File over app", Unix approach. - Try to sort things with universal concepts: locations, things, people, events, metrics, howtos.…

What do you mean by "the Web"? The internet, or some sort of network graph of notes (such as can be made in Obsidian)?

Either way, what is the problem with it?

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does not solve the fundamental problem of a file system that you also could file this under m->management->books You can use symbolic links to connect directories and file to multiple parents.

I know. But this is asking and would get messy very fast. And what if an item has 10 attributes? John Doe has Birthday on December 12th would have at least 5 already.

I've been thinking about writing a FUSE filesystem for precisely this sort of thing with regard to my collection of photographs.

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#160
post #124
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know this is a fairly well-trodden model Actually, if you have other examples of this happening in the wild, I'd be quite interested. The other widespread example I have in mind (which seems to work well) is WordPress extensions with premium features, but I've not encountered this too often neither. Edit: thanks all for your examples :-)

I know there are some open source Mac apps sold for a couple bucks but you can also build for yourself. That said, I assumed it’s fairly well-trodden mostly because FSF for as long as I can remember approved/recommended something along the lines of selling builds but completely opening the source. I guess RHEL arguably falls into the camp as well, but they sell more than builds.

Ok, got it!

I believe the FSF points about selling software come from a time where you sold the medium (like floppy disks) with the software: you had to allow doing this because it was not practical to spread software without doing this and not costing (too much) to the author.

I don't really think it's practical advice for the present, they were never really business model specialists.

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