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This is the problem with a good percentage of advice and life/career hacks on HN -- they're always spoken of in the early, idealist stage. Before the reality ha

This is the problem with a good percentage of advice and life/career hacks on HN -- they're always spoken of in the early, idealist stage. Before the reality has set in. Before the downsides have made their presence known. I've been in a number of firms with wiki knowledge systems. In 100% of the cases it was a wasteland of derelict knowledge that had been abandoned and was usually much more destructive than beneficial. No one was going to undertake the process of keeping it up to date, and at the same time the emergent organization/structure of information was constantly evolving, and wikis are terrible at evolving with that unless you literally have people whose sole job is making templates deciding on the ontology, etc. Similarly, countless people have tried to organize their lives into tools like wiki. And in the early days it seems magical. I suspect the failure rate would be somewhere barely under 100% at the one month mark.

hombre_fatal 6y ago
I don't really understand your take-away except for a cynical "bah, nothing ever works so don't try." Or maybe it annoys you that you didn't see some trite platitudinal disclaimer in my post about how how life is all about trade-offs and what works for Bob might work for Alice. It's like you're about to tell me that exercising doesn't pay off because it's hard to stick with a strategy. "Heh, let's see if he's still doing pushups in a year." You don't seem to realize you're just describing literally all systems. How organized is everyone's filesystem and ~/Documents folder? It's pure chaos with the only sweet release being that you might not carry it over when you upgrade computers and get to start from scratch. Will I be maintaining my localhost wiki in a year? I don't know. But it's worth a shot. After two days it's already 1000x organized than even my best efforts so far. Is it for everyone? Nothing is for everyone. But your comment seems to suggest that you think the alternative to <organization strategy> is organized data which obviously isn't the case. What you will realize is that there is no perfect one-size-fits-all strategy. All you can do is try things and see if they work for you, and see if you stick with them years later. So, for today, I recommend trying some localhost wiki options in your battle against chaos. If it doesn't work for you, so what?
- hn_check 6y ago
  >"I don't really understand your take-away except for a cynical "bah, nothing ever works so don't try." Or maybe it annoys you that you didn't see some trite platitudinal disclaimer in my post about how how life is all about trade-offs and what works for Bob might work for Alice." The take away is clearly "things that work in the small often don't work in the large. If you're taking life advice, take it from someone who has done something for a while and had a reasonable experience.". Someone crowing about their two day experience is...well... This applies to all sorts of similar enthusiastic advice. Intermittent napping. Standing desks. The Dvorak keyboard. Drinking your coffee with butter. New diets. Going without the internet. Meditating. Taking up karate. Working in parks. Whatever. There's a lot of wisdom and knowledge among them, but it isn't coming from the guy who just started. If someone is giving a sales pitch for a lifestyle change based upon a tiny experience, they are often doing it because they think converting others makes it more real/more likely to yield the change they want. It doesn't work that way. Try things. Try lots of things. Save evangelizing until you maybe have a real experience?
  - hombre_fatal 6y ago
    Ah, so worthless cynicism and condescension after all. I see why you made a novelty account for this. But I wonder if you see the irony in promoting yourself into this role of inquisitor? I get it, you're mad that I admitted I only have two days of experience while telling people how to get started in one of the most important software platforms in the world (it's how Wikipedia works) -- I'm not exactly making new sounds on this. Maybe you're fine with my install instructions, but I went too far (for your tastes) when I said it was promising so far. And you thought this behavior needed to be called out by your "Dunning-Kruger in the wild" meme account. I don't think I've misinterpreted the situation, I just find it a bit sad and I wonder how much you think you've added to the discussion. That you run that account, you must think: "quite a bit!" I'll leave that one up to the audience.
    - hn_check 6y ago
      >"Ah, so worthless cynicism and condescension after all. I see why you made a novelty account for this. But I wonder if you see the irony in playing this sort of inquisitor?" You are irrationally hostile. My comments are not for your edification or service, and this is a shared platform where multiple people are reading and deriving value, each comment kicking off different thoughts and conversations. If you take this so incredibly personally, that's a you problem. Your internalization and repeated attacks are bizarre. But you do you.
nl 6y ago
I agree with this for the most part. I've thought about knowledge management a lot over the last 20 years, since I built a Wiki/bug tracker system (this was before anything except Bugzilla existed). I think knowledge management systems can work if the "management" side is a side effect of their use.
- hn_check 6y ago
  Absolutely, if management is entirely invested in it, and it becomes a mandatory part of the process (e.g. updating the wiki is a part of a release or new build), it can be a critical resource. The problem is that the organic nature of wikis lead to people believing that it will just emerge, in the same way that the relatively unstructured wikipedia eventually became a critical resource. But citing wikipedia is often folly. The man hour to output ratio of wikipedia is absolutely enormous. It is an extraordinarily inefficient process that works because there are millions of people moving, structuring, contributing, making templates, rewording, reorganizing, etc. Eventually greatness emerged.
  - rpdillon 6y ago
    I agree. The biggest difference that came to mind when I read your comment is that a personal wiki doesn't have the economy of scale that Wikipedia has. With Wikipedia, the effort of hundreds to organize everything can benefit millions. With a personal wiki, the dynamic is different. I 100% agree that there's a real risk of a 'honeymoon period' giving a false sense of ROI, and I've fallen victim to early enthusiasm about various organizations strategies that ended up not lasting more than a month. I've resorted to a to-do list and a chronological work log as mechanisms that require little organizational investment but yield many of the benefits of a more sophisticated system.

hombre_fatal 6y ago

I don't really understand your take-away except for a cynical "bah, nothing ever works so don't try." Or maybe it annoys you that you didn't see some trite platitudinal disclaimer in my post about how how life is all about trade-offs and what works for Bob might work for Alice. It's like you're about to tell me that exercising doesn't pay off because it's hard to stick with a strategy. "Heh, let's see if he's still doing pushups in a year." You don't seem to realize you're just describing literally all systems. How organized is everyone's filesystem and ~/Documents folder? It's pure chaos with the only sweet release being that you might not carry it over when you upgrade computers and get to start from scratch. Will I be maintaining my localhost wiki in a year? I don't know. But it's worth a shot. After two days it's already 1000x organized than even my best efforts so far. Is it for everyone? Nothing is for everyone. But your comment seems to suggest that you think the alternative to <organization strategy> is organized data which obviously isn't the case. What you will realize is that there is no perfect one-size-fits-all strategy. All you can do is try things and see if they work for you, and see if you stick with them years later. So, for today, I recommend trying some localhost wiki options in your battle against chaos. If it doesn't work for you, so what?

hn_check 6y ago
>"I don't really understand your take-away except for a cynical "bah, nothing ever works so don't try." Or maybe it annoys you that you didn't see some trite platitudinal disclaimer in my post about how how life is all about trade-offs and what works for Bob might work for Alice." The take away is clearly "things that work in the small often don't work in the large. If you're taking life advice, take it from someone who has done something for a while and had a reasonable experience.". Someone crowing about their two day experience is...well... This applies to all sorts of similar enthusiastic advice. Intermittent napping. Standing desks. The Dvorak keyboard. Drinking your coffee with butter. New diets. Going without the internet. Meditating. Taking up karate. Working in parks. Whatever. There's a lot of wisdom and knowledge among them, but it isn't coming from the guy who just started. If someone is giving a sales pitch for a lifestyle change based upon a tiny experience, they are often doing it because they think converting others makes it more real/more likely to yield the change they want. It doesn't work that way. Try things. Try lots of things. Save evangelizing until you maybe have a real experience?
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  Ah, so worthless cynicism and condescension after all. I see why you made a novelty account for this. But I wonder if you see the irony in promoting yourself into this role of inquisitor? I get it, you're mad that I admitted I only have two days of experience while telling people how to get started in one of the most important software platforms in the world (it's how Wikipedia works) -- I'm not exactly making new sounds on this. Maybe you're fine with my install instructions, but I went too far (for your tastes) when I said it was promising so far. And you thought this behavior needed to be called out by your "Dunning-Kruger in the wild" meme account. I don't think I've misinterpreted the situation, I just find it a bit sad and I wonder how much you think you've added to the discussion. That you run that account, you must think: "quite a bit!" I'll leave that one up to the audience.
  - hn_check 6y ago
    >"Ah, so worthless cynicism and condescension after all. I see why you made a novelty account for this. But I wonder if you see the irony in playing this sort of inquisitor?" You are irrationally hostile. My comments are not for your edification or service, and this is a shared platform where multiple people are reading and deriving value, each comment kicking off different thoughts and conversations. If you take this so incredibly personally, that's a you problem. Your internalization and repeated attacks are bizarre. But you do you.

nl 6y ago

I agree with this for the most part. I've thought about knowledge management a lot over the last 20 years, since I built a Wiki/bug tracker system (this was before anything except Bugzilla existed). I think knowledge management systems can work if the "management" side is a side effect of their use.

hn_check 6y ago
Absolutely, if management is entirely invested in it, and it becomes a mandatory part of the process (e.g. updating the wiki is a part of a release or new build), it can be a critical resource. The problem is that the organic nature of wikis lead to people believing that it will just emerge, in the same way that the relatively unstructured wikipedia eventually became a critical resource. But citing wikipedia is often folly. The man hour to output ratio of wikipedia is absolutely enormous. It is an extraordinarily inefficient process that works because there are millions of people moving, structuring, contributing, making templates, rewording, reorganizing, etc. Eventually greatness emerged.
- rpdillon 6y ago
  I agree. The biggest difference that came to mind when I read your comment is that a personal wiki doesn't have the economy of scale that Wikipedia has. With Wikipedia, the effort of hundreds to organize everything can benefit millions. With a personal wiki, the dynamic is different. I 100% agree that there's a real risk of a 'honeymoon period' giving a false sense of ROI, and I've fallen victim to early enthusiasm about various organizations strategies that ended up not lasting more than a month. I've resorted to a to-do list and a chronological work log as mechanisms that require little organizational investment but yield many of the benefits of a more sophisticated system.