Every article now has a (very basic) GitHub-like issue tracker. Comments now go under issues, and issues go under articles. Issues themselves are very similar to articles, with a title and a body.
This was part of 1.0, but not the first priority, but I did it now anyways because I'm trying to do all the database changes ASAP as I'm not in the mood to write database migrations.
Here's an example:
- ourbigbook.com/go/issue/2/donald-trump/atomic-orbital a specific issue about the article "Atomic Orbital" by Donald Trump. Note the comments possibly by other users at the bottom.
- ourbigbook.com/go/issues/1/donald-trump/atomic-orbital list of issues about the article "Atomic Orbital" by Donald Trump
I was trying to learn about how some types of quantum computers work, when I came across this pearl:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Paul#Scientific_results Wolfgang Paul, 1989 Nobel Prize in Physics winner, referred to Wolfgang Pauli, 1945 winner, as his "imaginary part".
Ciro's Edict #5 Skip ID extraction and rendering based on database timestamps by 
Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16This means while developing a website locally with the OurBigBook CLI, if you have a bunch of files with an error in one of them, your first run will run slowly until the error:but further runs will blast through the files that worked, skipping all files that have sucessfully converted:so you can fix file by file and move on quickly.
extract_ids README.ciro
extract_ids README.ciro finished in 73.82836899906397 ms
extract_ids art.ciro
extract_ids art.ciro finished in 671.1738419979811 ms
extract_ids ciro-santilli.ciro
extract_ids ciro-santilli.ciro finished in 1009.6256089992821 ms
extract_ids science.ciro
error: science.ciro:13686:1: named argument "parent" given multiple times
extract_ids science.ciro finished in 1649.6193730011582 msextract_ids README.ciro
extract_ids README.ciro skipped by timestamp
extract_ids art.ciro
extract_ids art.ciro skipped by timestamp
extract_ids ciro-santilli.ciro
extract_ids ciro-santilli.ciro skipped by timestamp
extract_ids science.ciroMore details at: cirosantilli.com/ourbigbook#no-render-timestamp
This was not fully trivial to implement because we had to rework how duplicate IDs are checked. Previously, we just nuked the DB every time on a directory conversion, and then repopulated everything. If a duplicated showed up on a file, it was a duplicate.
But now that we are not necessarily extracing IDs from every file, we can't just nuke the database anymore, otherwise we'd lose the information. Therefore, what we have to do is to convert every file, and only at the end check the duplicates.
Managed to do that with a single query as documented at: stackoverflow.com/questions/71235548/how-to-find-all-rows-that-have-certain-columns-duplicated-in-sequelize/71235550#71235550
After something broke on the website due to SQLite vs PostgreSQL inconsistencies and took me a day to figure it out, I finally decided to update the test system so that
OURBIGBOOK_POSTGRES=true npm test will run the tests on PostgreSQL.Originally, these were being run only on SQLite, which is the major use case for OurBigBook CLI, which came before the website.
Ciro's Edict #5 Link to an image or video in another file that has an Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
\x on title from another file by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16Issue report at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook/issues/198 Suppose you had:
programming-language.ciro
= Programming language
\Image[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cirosantilli/media/master/python-logo.jpg]
{title=The \x[python-programming-language] logo}
== Python
{c}
{disambiguate=programming-language}= Logos I like
\x[image-the-python-logo]Now, when rendering
\x[image-the-python-logo], we would need to fetch two IDs:image-the-python-logofor theTheandlogopartpython-programming-languageitself, to know that\x[python-programming-language]should render asPython
But after group all SQL queries together was done, there was no way to know that rendering
image-the-python-logo would imply also fetching python-programming-language.This was solved by adding a new database entry type,
REFS_TABLE_X_TITLE_TITLE to the existing References table, which tracks dependencies between IDs.It is quite mind blowing when you think about it, that the huge majority of your body's cells is essentially just there to support a tiny ammount of germline, which are the only cells that can actually pass on! It is fun to imagine the cell type tree for this, with a huge branching of somatic cells, and only a few germline going forward.
One of the simplest known seems to be: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichoplax
www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/en/articles/a_00220.html "The simplest multicellular organism unveiled" from 2013 mentions Tetrabaena socialis.
- youtu.be/1v6cgSkiHik?t=513 multicellularity is polyphyletic, e.g. evolved separately on plants, fungi and animals.
- youtu.be/1v6cgSkiHik?t=668 describes how unicellular organism choanoflagellates form colony, and how animals are characterized by certain key types of cellular interaction: adhesion, communication, regulation (cell differentiation) and extra cellular matrix production
It is hard to distinguish between colonies of unicellular organism and multicellular organism as there is a continuum between both depending on how well integrated they cells are.
The China front was of course the Russia front this time: stackoverflow.com/users/895245 (web.archive.org/web/20220322230513/https://stackoverflow.com/users/895245/ciro-santilli-Путлер-Капут-六四事)
Ciro's Edict #4 Further improvements to the website's base technology by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16github.com/cirosantilli/node-express-sequelize-nextjs-realworld-example-app contains the same baseline tech as OurBigBook, and I have been use to quickly test/benchmark new concepts for the website base.
I'm almost proud about that project, as a reasonable template for a Next.js project. It is not perfect, notably see issues on the issue tracker, but it it quite reasonable.
The side effects of ambitious goals are often the most valuable thing achieved once again? I to actually make the project be more important thatn the side effects this time, but we'll see.
Since the last update, I've made some major improvements to the baseline tech of the website, which I'll move little by little into OurBigBook. Some of the improvements actually started in OurBigBook.com. The improvements were:
- got a satisfactorily comprehensive linting working at: this commit. Nothing is easy, not even that! Part of the wisdom extracted to: stackoverflow.com/questions/58233482/next-js-setting-up-eslint-for-nextjs/70519682#70519682.
- fully rationalized directory structure to avoid nasty errors that show up in Next.js when accidentally requiring backend stuff on the client. Commit. A detailed explanation of this was extracted to: stackoverflow.com/questions/64926174/module-not-found-cant-resolve-fs-in-next-js-application/70363153#70363153.
- create an extremely clean and rationalized way to do API tests from a simple
npm test. These now actually start a clean server, and make full HTTP requests to that server. Commit. Wisdom extracted to: stackoverflow.com/questions/63762896/whats-the-best-way-to-test-express-js-api/70479940#70479940. - greatly reduce the number of SQL queries, fully understood every problem
- more intelligently using JOINs where I have managed to get Sequelize to do what I fucking want. This also led to several sequelize Stack Overflow answers as usual: stackoverflow.com/search?tab=newest&q=user%3a895245%20%5bsequelize%5dEverything that I didn't manage to do because of crappy sequelize is documented at: github.com/cirosantilli/node-express-sequelize-nextjs-realworld-example-app/issues/5
- better understanding Next.js/React/useSWR do avoid doing double API queries
At github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/738 a user made a comment about gang raping my mother (more like country-raping).
As mentioned at github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/739, ally Martin then reported the issue, and GitHub took down the wumao's account for a while using their undocumented shadowban feature, until the wumao edited the issue.
Based on the discussion with Martin, I then recommended at github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/blob/41b4741a4e6553f44f5f1ef85cf63c55eb7b8277/CONTRIBUTING.md that we do not report such issues, and that GitHub do not delete such accounts, with rationale explained on the CONTRIBUTING.
Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project
Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
Intro to OurBigBook
. Source. We have two killer features:
- topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculusArticles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
- a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
- a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
Figure 1. Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page. View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivativeVideo 2. OurBigBook Web topics demo. Source. - local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
- to OurBigBook.com to get awesome multi-user features like topics and likes
- as HTML files to a static website, which you can host yourself for free on many external providers like GitHub Pages, and remain in full control
Figure 3. Visual Studio Code extension installation.
Figure 4. Visual Studio Code extension tree navigation.
Figure 5. Web editor. You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.Video 3. Edit locally and publish demo. Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.Video 4. OurBigBook Visual Studio Code extension editing and navigation demo. Source. 
- Infinitely deep tables of contents:
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact