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I find that an ability to search the knowledgebase exceeds the value of organizing according to a hierarchy. I can see some value in linking/backlinking à la an

I find that an ability to search the knowledgebase exceeds the value of organizing according to a hierarchy. I can see some value in linking/backlinking à la an encyclopedic "See also" reference for discovering similar information that doesn't share keywords. Are there other disadvantages to an "all search" solution I'm overlooking?

_jal 6y ago
Think it tends to be mostly a personal preference thing. I use both, but do rather like hierarchies - they just seem like a natural way of grokking things. I also tend to just naturally outline a lot, whether writing, taking notes or coding. Another reason I find them useful is that the act of organizing them is also a form of learning for me - not just the information, but the context and relations. A third reason I like hierarchies is probably a result of a mental flaw. I've always had an issue with "missing words" - where a particular noun just doesn't come to me when I need it. Definitely worse with proper names for some reason. When I'm missing a word, context works much better for finding something.
- en3r0 6y ago
  I also do both right now, helps with some rediscovery, but I think tagging (linking) could be a better long term approach.
igammarays 6y ago
The disadvantage of an "all search" solution is that it presumes that you know what you are looking for. Some of the greatest value I get from my notes happens when I'm serendipitously browsing an old hierarchy, remembering connections I made before.
- battery_cowboy 6y ago
  All search plus some form of spaced memorization scheme for pages or blocks within pages would be nice, I wouldn't have to actively structure my notes that way. I hate structure, I'm always refactoring, so I prefer just saving things in one big folder with labels if I can. I wish I didn't even have to use folders in my file system!
  - fsiefken 6y ago
    tiddlywiki has an anki plugin
drjasonharrison 6y ago
When all you have is search, you may run into the difficulty of actively organizing and structuring notes and clippings into a hierarchy, clusters, or mind map. Also the search support varies from "exact match" to "fuzzy match" to "synonym search". For example, Evernote supports Notebooks but they only create one level of hierarchy. Often the use of "tags" is then recommended to label notes with context, hierarchy, and categories.
kirubakaran 6y ago
I agree 100%. It's shocking how many knowledge base apps there are with terrible search. What's the point of putting stuff in if you can't find it when you need it? I've been working on https://histre.com/ https://histre.com/ (Effortless Knowledge Base) and search is the #1 thing I'm focusing on now.
airstrike 6y ago
I agree 100%. Don't see why one approach must preclude the other. I prefer using tags rather than folders, so I actually keep every e-mail since last year's January 1st in my Outlook inbox (currently at 29,348 and counting...) and just search. If you let Outlook index everything, it's blazing fast, and you can sort by name / subject / date / category pretty easily to further drill down results and find what you want. Haven't found a system that works better, with the only disadvantage being that searching on mobile really sucks
nicbou 6y ago
This was my experience with my photo collection. I pretty much abandoned Lightroom because Google lets me type "pug" in the search box and find all of my pug pictures. It also holds my pictures and their metadata hostage but that's another story.
radarsat1 6y ago
My "all search" solution is a text file. Works great.
marvinblum 6y ago
We went for search with Emvi [1]. There are people who like hierarchy, but I think if you don't know what you're looking for you won't find it in a structure anyway. Except everyone on the team or you personally put a lot of thought into it. A hierarchy does not scale well. We tried to make the search as powerful as possible. With filters that can be combined to filter the result set, but I mostly use the textsearch as it is good enough. Im still thinking about how we could add "explorability". Sometimes you just want to click around a bit and explore what's there without any real goal in mind. Let me know if you have an idea on how the system could support that. We are rebuilding the UI right now to put an even stronger focus on search. You can read about it here [2] if you like. [1] https://emvi.com/ https://emvi.com/ [2] https://emvi.com/blog/a-new-experimental-user-interface-QMZgmZG1L5 https://emvi.com/blog/a-new-experimental-user-interface-QMZg...
- slightwinder 6y ago
  > A hierarchy does not scale well. We tried to make the search as powerful as possible. With filters that can be combined to filter the result set, but I mostly use the textsearch as it is good enough. Does it support dynamic hierachies? A Hierachy where each level is the result of a search/filter on the parent-level?
  - marvinblum 6y ago
    Hm I haven't heard of this term before but it sounds like it. The filters are additive, which means you reduce the result further by adding more filters. You can for example filter for a tag, add a group to filter for authors and then search through the remaining articles by text search. I haven't found this feature to be that useful all the time, depending on the amount of articles you have. This is why it won't be in the new UI on day one (but will be re-implemented later, the backend is still there). You can find almost anything by using a few keywords, which is how I navigate Emvi right now. [Edit] We have the plan to add configurable dashboard filters, which use the filters to show a subset of all articles, tags, members, groups and lists you like. I guess that's closer to what you described.
- NotUsingLinux 6y ago
slightwinder 6y ago
> I find that an ability to search the knowledgebase exceeds the value of organizing according to a hierarchy. Why not both? Searching is good for makro-managment, navigation and dynamic. Hierachy works well for micro-managment, relations and static access.
NotUsingLinux 6y ago
It depends on what you are looking for. Your thinking works at least in a different way. You remember things by finding things that connect to the thing your looking for... One could say their "Link map" enables such a thing but its not quite the same thing. Personally I do really like the Zettelkasten Method which leans more towards a representation of thought in a written form. Ever wondered how the Zettelkasten "guy" Nikolas Luhman could be so productive(> 50 books) it was because of his Zettelkasten(Method). http://www.dansheffler.com/blog/2015-05-05-the-zettelkasten-method/ http://www.dansheffler.com/blog/2015-05-05-the-zettelkasten-... So every time I find a new tool, at least for me I evaluate it through that lens: how much does it really help me to represent my thought process. And hiearchical notes are not enough for that, at least for me...

_jal 6y ago

Think it tends to be mostly a personal preference thing. I use both, but do rather like hierarchies - they just seem like a natural way of grokking things. I also tend to just naturally outline a lot, whether writing, taking notes or coding. Another reason I find them useful is that the act of organizing them is also a form of learning for me - not just the information, but the context and relations. A third reason I like hierarchies is probably a result of a mental flaw. I've always had an issue with "missing words" - where a particular noun just doesn't come to me when I need it. Definitely worse with proper names for some reason. When I'm missing a word, context works much better for finding something.

en3r0 6y ago
I also do both right now, helps with some rediscovery, but I think tagging (linking) could be a better long term approach.

igammarays 6y ago

The disadvantage of an "all search" solution is that it presumes that you know what you are looking for. Some of the greatest value I get from my notes happens when I'm serendipitously browsing an old hierarchy, remembering connections I made before.

battery_cowboy 6y ago
All search plus some form of spaced memorization scheme for pages or blocks within pages would be nice, I wouldn't have to actively structure my notes that way. I hate structure, I'm always refactoring, so I prefer just saving things in one big folder with labels if I can. I wish I didn't even have to use folders in my file system!
- fsiefken 6y ago
  tiddlywiki has an anki plugin

drjasonharrison 6y ago

When all you have is search, you may run into the difficulty of actively organizing and structuring notes and clippings into a hierarchy, clusters, or mind map. Also the search support varies from "exact match" to "fuzzy match" to "synonym search". For example, Evernote supports Notebooks but they only create one level of hierarchy. Often the use of "tags" is then recommended to label notes with context, hierarchy, and categories.

kirubakaran 6y ago

I agree 100%. It's shocking how many knowledge base apps there are with terrible search. What's the point of putting stuff in if you can't find it when you need it? I've been working on https://histre.com/ https://histre.com/ (Effortless Knowledge Base) and search is the #1 thing I'm focusing on now.

airstrike 6y ago

I agree 100%. Don't see why one approach must preclude the other. I prefer using tags rather than folders, so I actually keep every e-mail since last year's January 1st in my Outlook inbox (currently at 29,348 and counting...) and just search. If you let Outlook index everything, it's blazing fast, and you can sort by name / subject / date / category pretty easily to further drill down results and find what you want. Haven't found a system that works better, with the only disadvantage being that searching on mobile really sucks

nicbou 6y ago

This was my experience with my photo collection. I pretty much abandoned Lightroom because Google lets me type "pug" in the search box and find all of my pug pictures. It also holds my pictures and their metadata hostage but that's another story.

radarsat1 6y ago

My "all search" solution is a text file. Works great.

marvinblum 6y ago

We went for search with Emvi [1]. There are people who like hierarchy, but I think if you don't know what you're looking for you won't find it in a structure anyway. Except everyone on the team or you personally put a lot of thought into it. A hierarchy does not scale well. We tried to make the search as powerful as possible. With filters that can be combined to filter the result set, but I mostly use the textsearch as it is good enough. Im still thinking about how we could add "explorability". Sometimes you just want to click around a bit and explore what's there without any real goal in mind. Let me know if you have an idea on how the system could support that. We are rebuilding the UI right now to put an even stronger focus on search. You can read about it here [2] if you like. [1] https://emvi.com/ https://emvi.com/ [2] https://emvi.com/blog/a-new-experimental-user-interface-QMZgmZG1L5 https://emvi.com/blog/a-new-experimental-user-interface-QMZg...

slightwinder 6y ago
> A hierarchy does not scale well. We tried to make the search as powerful as possible. With filters that can be combined to filter the result set, but I mostly use the textsearch as it is good enough. Does it support dynamic hierachies? A Hierachy where each level is the result of a search/filter on the parent-level?
- marvinblum 6y ago
  Hm I haven't heard of this term before but it sounds like it. The filters are additive, which means you reduce the result further by adding more filters. You can for example filter for a tag, add a group to filter for authors and then search through the remaining articles by text search. I haven't found this feature to be that useful all the time, depending on the amount of articles you have. This is why it won't be in the new UI on day one (but will be re-implemented later, the backend is still there). You can find almost anything by using a few keywords, which is how I navigate Emvi right now. [Edit] We have the plan to add configurable dashboard filters, which use the filters to show a subset of all articles, tags, members, groups and lists you like. I guess that's closer to what you described.
NotUsingLinux 6y ago

slightwinder 6y ago

> I find that an ability to search the knowledgebase exceeds the value of organizing according to a hierarchy. Why not both? Searching is good for makro-managment, navigation and dynamic. Hierachy works well for micro-managment, relations and static access.

NotUsingLinux 6y ago

It depends on what you are looking for. Your thinking works at least in a different way. You remember things by finding things that connect to the thing your looking for... One could say their "Link map" enables such a thing but its not quite the same thing. Personally I do really like the Zettelkasten Method which leans more towards a representation of thought in a written form. Ever wondered how the Zettelkasten "guy" Nikolas Luhman could be so productive(> 50 books) it was because of his Zettelkasten(Method). http://www.dansheffler.com/blog/2015-05-05-the-zettelkasten-method/ http://www.dansheffler.com/blog/2015-05-05-the-zettelkasten-... So every time I find a new tool, at least for me I evaluate it through that lens: how much does it really help me to represent my thought process. And hiearchical notes are not enough for that, at least for me...