urlgreyhot: It's time to start using a wiki for my personal knowledge management
I started typing a long response to urlgreyhot's It's time to start using a wiki for my personal knowledge management , and then realized I needed to capture it here, since it is a kind of rationalization for myself of the different technologies I've been using. And he doesn't have trackback turned on, so I can't post here but still let him know.
I found myself involved in a bunch of different projects, all of which I had to start gathering knowledge for. The problems are somewhat the same -- the structure of Drupal makes it a bit harder for ad-hoc information gathering. On to my solution…
I already run a couple of WordPress blogs, so I ended up setting one up to use for a links blog. The best thing I find about it is the bookmarklet, where I can highlight some text on any page, then just hit a link in my toolbar, check off a few categories, and boom! -- a new entry. And, I can still syndicate the links blog back onto my main page using RSS.
I actually think that adding bookmarklet support to Drupal's weblinks module would probably be enough for me. I'm in the process of splitting my personal and business blogs completely, and will likely implement this for the business one.
However, lots of other people have also reported success with using an external service like Furl or del.icio.us/ (again using RSS to syndicate back).
That was a long way of saying that you may find yourself addicted to Drupal -- I know I am!
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Thanks for the pointer, Lloyd
Thanks for the pointer to pmwiki, Lloyd. I've already installed PhpWiki, but pmwiki looks good too, so I'm going to try installing that to compare. Am sure I will blog about it eventually.
I'm probably not going to sto
I'm probably not going to stop using Drupal for my links directory, but I will stop using the book. Drupal is great for some things, but the loose notetaking I do to keep track of and organize some of my thoughts has become a bit difficult in Drupal. I think, in some regard, this is because it's difficult to connect and view the disparate of information I've blogged over the years. The book structure is nice for outlining, which is basically what I want to do. But I want to do it in a quick and easy way -- like dashing off notes that I can reorganize later. I'm talking more about recording and organizing my thoughts than pointing to others' thoughts, really. More like a real notebook. And I think Wikis are better for that -- much better. I know a lot of people don't like the way Wikis work (esp. CamelCase WikiWords) and don't see an elegant way of integrating WikiWord node creation into Drupal. Perhaps, this explains why it's been hard for people to really do that part? I don't know. It just seems like this is as good a way for me to organize my thoughts right now -- it's analagous to using a notebook to outline. -Michael (jibbajabba)
Wiki vs. ???
I've used Wiki's before. I've also tried several varieties of outliners. They just don't seem to suit the way I work.
Which is what it comes down to, I guess. Different people have different modes of working and capturing information, and what works for one won't necessarily work for others.
I don't think WikiWord node creation would be that hard with Drupal. I suspect it has been a lack of developer resources -- basically, if no one builds it, it doesn't get built.
Hmmm...some thoughts on how that would work:
- make it a filter
- "create WikiWord node" as a permission setting (users that have this will see a WikiWord underlined with a question mark next to it; clicking on it will go to the next screen)
- node type selection screen: might be a weblink, a story, a book page, an image, etc.
- rest of node creation happens as per normal
- now, CamelCase and/or filter that looks something like [wiki:CoolStuff,"another page"] will link to the new node; probably need a table to map CamelCase to nodes, and might also have the admin ability to point to different nodes
ways of working
Yes, absolutely. Everyone's mode of working is different. And that's why wikis might work for me, or perhaps some combination of NetNewsWire and OmniOutliner, as I've been talking about today. Something, anything that's easier. Hell, it might be as easy to use Word or any of the many notepad type apps available if that's what I was comfortable with. Outlining seems to work for me though. It's how I start most papers and presentations.