Lists:
- www.bibsonomy.org/user/bshanks/education fantastic list, presumably by this guy:
- www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/168cmca/which_note_taking_app_for_a_luhmann_zettlekasten/
- www.reddit.com/r/productivity/comments/18vvavl/best_free_notetaking_app_switching_from_evernote/
- github.com/topics/note-taking has a billion projects. Oops.
- www.noteapps.ca/
Personal knowledge base recommendation threads:
TODO look into those more:
- roamresearch.com/ no public graphs
- nesslabs.com/roam-research-alternatives a bunch of open source alternatives to it
- Trillium Notes. Notable project! Pun unintended!
- Stroll giffmex.org/stroll/stroll.html. How to publish? How to see tree?
- tiddlyroam joekroese.github.io/tiddlyroam/ graph rather than text searchable ToC. Public instance? Multiuser?
- Athens github.com/athensresearch/athens rudimentary WYSIWYG
- Logseq github.com/logseq/logseq no web interface/centralized server?
- itsfoss.com/obsidian-markdown-editor. Closed source. They have an OK static website publication mechanism: publish.obsidian.md/ram-rachum-research/Public/Agents+aren't+objective+entities%2C+they're+a+model but leaf node view only for now, no cross source page render. They are committed to having plaintext source which is cool: twitter.com/kepano/status/1675626836821409792
- But no upvotes/topics. Favorites could be used as upvotes, but it does not seem like you can favorite other people's work. It's just not their focus, will never be.They have an education push: www.notion.so/product/notion-for-education but it's likely hopeless.
- CherryTree github.com/giuspen/cherrytree written in C++, GTK, WYSIWYG
- github.com/dullage/flatnotes: Python
- github.com/usememos/memos: Go
- github.com/siyuan-note/siyuan: Go
- github.com/vnotex/vnote: C++
- github.com/Laverna/laverna: JavaScript
- github.com/taniarascia/takenote
- github.com/silverbulletmd/silverbullet: TypeScript, Markdown, web-based WYSIWYG, focus on querying
Major downsides that most of those personal knowledge databases have:
- very little/no focus on public publishing, which is the primary focus of OurBigBook.com
- either limited or no multiuser features, e.g. edit protection and cross user topics
- graph based instead of tree based. For books we need a single clear ordering of a tree. Graph should come as a secondary thing through tags.
Closed source dump:
- www.toodledo.com
- Simplenote: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplenote, by WordPress.com operator company Automattic
Editor. As last time. And the one before. But now it is for real.
I guess ended up doing all the "how things should look like" features because they clarify what the website is supposed to do, and I already have my own content to bring it alive via
ourbigbook --web
upload.But now I honestly feel that all the major elements of "how things should look like" have fallen into place.
And yeah, nobody else is never going to contribute as things are! WYSIWYG is a must.
I was really impressed by Trillium Notes. I should have checked it long ago. The UI is amazing, and being all Js-based, could potentially be reused for our purposes. The project itself is a single-person/full trust notetaking only for now however, so not a direct replacement to OurBigBook.
Long story short, the project is so far a complete failure on the most important metric: number of regular users, which current sits at exactly one: myself.
There were notable users who found the project online and who actually tried to use the website for some content and provided extremely valuable feedback:Unfortunately after the period of a few weeks they stopped using it to follow their other priorities instead. Which is of course totally fine, however sad.
I still believe that the OurBigBook Web feature is a significant tech innovation that could make the website go big.
I also believe that the project gets many fundamentals of braindumping right, notably the infinitely deep table of contents without forced scoping, e.g.:does not make Calculus have an ID orr URL of
- Mathematics
- Calculus
mathematics/calculus
, rather it's just calculus
.Internal cross file internal link uses only the leaf ID
hilbert-space
.But there is a fundamental difficulty in reaching critical mass to that self-sustaining point, as people don't seem to be convinced by these logical "my system is better" argument alone, as opposed to having them Google into stuff they need now and then understand that the project is awesome.
A closely related critical mass issue is that existing big multiuser knowledge base websites such as Stack Overflow and Wikipedia have a tremendous advantage on PageRank. No matter how useless a Wikipedia article about something is, it will always be on top of Google within a week of creation for title hits. And since the main goal of publishing your stuff is to get it seen, it makes much more sense for writers to publish on such existing websites whenever possible, because anywhere else it is way way less likely to be seen by anybody.
Even I end up writing way more on Stack Overflow than on OurBigBook as a programmer. But I still believe that there is a value to OurBigBook, for the usual reasons of:
- it allows you to organize a more global view of a subject, i.e. a book. Even I write answers on Stack Overflow, I also tend to organize links to these answers in a structured ways here, see e.g. big topics such as SQL
- deletionism and overly narrowness of allowed topics/style
Perhaps what saddens me the most is that even on GitHub stars/Twitter/Hacker news terms there is almost no interest in the project despite the fact that I consider that it has innovations, while many other note taking apps as well in the thousands of stars. Maybe I'm just delusional and all the tech that I'm doing is completely useless?
Part of the issue is probably linked to the fact that most other note taking apps focus on "help me organize my ideas so I can make more money" and often completely ignore "I want to publish my knowledge", and stuff that helps you make money is always easier to sell and promote.
OurBigBook on the other hand a huge focus on "I want to publish me knowledge". It aims almost single mindedly in being the best tool ever for that. However this doesn't make money for people, and therefore there are going to be way less potential users.
I do believe strongly that all it takes is a few users for the project to snowball. For some people, once you start braindumping, it is very addictive, and you never want to stop basically. So with only a few of those we can open large parts of undergrad knowledge to the world. But these people are few, and so far I haven't been able to find even a single one like me, and on top of that convince them that I have created the ultimate system for their knowledge publishing desires.
Another general lesson is that I should perhaps aimed for greater compatibility with existing systems such as Obsidian. Taking something that many people already know and use can have a huge impact on acceptance. E.g. anything that touches Obsidian can reach thousands of stars: github.com/KosmosisDire/obsidian-webpage-export. Note taking apps that aim for "markdown" compatibility also tend to fare better, even if in the end you inevitably have to extend the Markdown for some of your features. And WYSIWYG, which I want but don't have, is perhaps the ultimate familiarity.
Another issue compared to other platforms is that OurBigBook just came out late. Obsidian launched in 2020. Roam Research and Trillium Notes also came earlier. And it is hard to fight the advantage already gained by those on the "I'm going to take some personal notes" area. I do believe however that there a strong separation between "these are my personal notes" and "I want to publish these". Once you decide to publish your knowledge, you immediately start to write in a different way, and it is very hard to convert pre-existing "private" notes into ones suitable for public consumption.
OK, I need to do content. I know :-) At the university I'm at, the only department that is open is the mathematics one. Both:All other courses extremely closed, notably Physics, which is the other course I'd consider. There are upsides and downsides for going for Mathematics:If I were free to choose, I might go for Physics instead. But maths isn't hard, and I think I'll just go with the hand I'm dealt this time to start with.
- physically, I'm sitting next to some students right now, though they don't yet know that their saviour is just next to them.
- in terms of publishing the course materials online. Many of them even have solution
- upside:
- maths doesn't change with time
- maths doesn't require experiments
- downside: most of it is useless compared to Physics
Tech wise, the big things are the following ones to which I have given different levels of architectural consideration (i.e. read: I'm afraid they'll be fucking hard and that I'll spend a month on yet another useless feature that won't help get a single user). I don't think I'll do those before at least a little bit of content, we'll see:
- WYSIWYG: this is not a question of if, but when and how. Even I miss it when dealing with images. I was particularly impressed by Trillium Notes, and might consider forking it or reusing some of its components
- perfect two way sync from web to local: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook/issues/326Currently, after much effort, publishing from local to web is extremely good.But pulling back changes that you make on web UI locally is not really possible. A basic version can be made easily, but a great version requires some thought.In particular, preventing accidental rewrite on simultaneous local + web edits require edit history to be in place.The rationale here is that users would start editing on Web with a low entry barrier. And as they become more committed to the project, they would eventually transition to having editing most of their content locally from a desktop, with the exception of a few minor edits on the go when they are on a cell phone, and which we want to very easily and automatically be pulled back to local as soon as they open an editor on their laptop.I.e. we want to add a downwards arrow to the following diagram:
Smaller cute tech that I might do before content "real quick" include:
- move more into community tagging rather than just community topic-ing:
- automatic topic rendering for plaintext! github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook/issues/356. In particular this could open the doors for AI generated content.
Another thing I really want to do before time is up is to create a video summarizing my philosophy of education. I want it to be as fun and funny and sad as possible, with silly moving animated images and slides, not just me talking to the camera. Although all of the points I intend to talk about have undoubtedly been covered by others, it is something that I feel so strongly about that I would like to tell others about it more personally. If I start it it will likely take a few days to get done, and I'm not sure wha the final quality would be. It is a bit sad to not do "project work", but I think I'll end up doing it regardless. Class it under "fundraising" if you will, as it may help to find other like minded but rich people.