5 ms·

We (Grafana) are just about to roll out https://www.simpplr.com/ https://www.simpplr.com/ internally. We've been using a mix of tools until now, Guru, Google D

by buro9 5y ago

We (Grafana) are just about to roll out https://www.simpplr.com/ https://www.simpplr.com/ internally. We've been using a mix of tools until now, Guru, Google Docs... but have lacked discoverability, powerful search, and in Google the ability to create sites for teams, etc. Personally I use Obsidian and the files are sync'd via Syncthing. What I wish would exist: A markdown driven wiki with Git (or something like it) in the backend so that you can clone the info locally, or refer to the master version, and even stage big changes to an area, etc. - basically something halfway between Obsidian and Confluence I guess.

jka 5y ago
Have you heard of / explored Athens Research[1] (brief summarization: open source, multiplayer-if-cloud-or-self-hosted, YC-backed)? [1] - https://www.athensresearch.org/ https://www.athensresearch.org/
dotancohen 5y ago
> A markdown driven wiki with Git This is exactly what I do. Though lately I've been transitioning to org-mode for non-personal notes as I don't need them on mobile. Your users can use any Markdown editor that they like. But one person should be responsible for creating new documents, so that there will be consistency in naming and placing in the hierarchy. Naming things is hard, leave that part up to the Knowledge Base owner.
- mplanchard 5y ago
  On iOS, PlainOrg and BeOrg do a good job of making your org notes readable, searchable, and (basically) editable. I have heard there are good apps for Android as well, but I can’t vouch for them personally.
  - xenodium 5y ago
    Hey, nice surprise to see Plain Org mentioned (author here). Glad you find it useful.
    - mplanchard 5y ago
      I’ve been using it since beta! It’s a great app, and I’m grateful to you for making it!
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  > leave that part up to the Knowledge Base owner. Well, that's against the philosophy of a wiki. Also, in a small team, nobody is the "knowledgebase owner" - he's just another developer. Putting a human in the workflow creates friction. But I'm totally with you on the "naming things" problem. A full-blown corporate knowledge management system is a repository you can throw anything into - invoices, emails, memos, reports, etc.; the system will automatically generate a knowledge taxonomy and article summaries. But such systems require much more maintenance effort than something simple like a wiki, and are overkill for a small team of developers.
- kaycebasques 5y ago
  One lesson learned from leading https://web.dev https://web.dev is that a lot of people, even technical ones, aren't comfortable with git + Markdown. And then there are people who are comfortable with it but feel that it's too much friction for simple docs updates.
  - dotancohen 5y ago
    For those who are uncomfortable with Git: My personal git notes repo has this script right there in the document root: $ cat ~/Notes/sync.sh #!/usr/bin/env bash git add * git commit -am "$(hostname)" git pull git push echo '' git status That's good for 99% of my own use - and I'm a technical user. You can leave those last two lines off and redirect stdout to /dev/null. If there's an error on "sync" the user can call you over to handle what will likely be either a merge conflict or a network issue. Even for Windows users you can probably wrap that in a .bat file to be double-clicked on the desktop. And there are a ton of WYSIWYG Markdown editors. I've used Typora in the past.
tempest_ 5y ago
WikiJS can store its files in git (https://docs.requarks.io/storage/git https://docs.requarks.io/storage/git) though it is not exactly easy to run as a stand alone app.
therealasdf 5y ago
AzureDevops wiki is exactly that. A git repo for markdown files
polote 5y ago
Simpplr is in my opinion an inferior tool to Confluence or Notion. It works mostly well for static information and as a enterprise search tool, but won't help improving the underlying culture. As for you ask, the best solution that I've found, is to let people document things on Github and index those documents in another tool. That way there is no duplication, you let people use the tool they know, can use Markdown, but still benefit from searching, assigning owner, up to date date, rights ... That's how we do it at Dokkument
yabones 5y ago
My solution (for personal notes etc) is to make a git repo with markdown files, then render it all with mkdocs on every push. In the past it was just a cron job running on a dumb little webserver (git pull && mkdocs build) to push the new changes every x minutes. Nowadays it's a bit more sophisticated with netlify building on main & PRs. Both are completely valid! Obviously it's not user-friendly at all. Only people who know how to use git can use it, which isn't great for collaboration with non-techie folks. Ideally, I'd build a little editor widget that could be embedded in the page...
discardedrefuse 5y ago
I just spent some time looking at this. There's no reason you can't use Obsidian with git. Obsidian just saves md files in a basic folder structure. You can git init in the root of your Obsidian vault directory (.gitignore your .obsidian folder). There's even an "Obsidian Git" community plugin that does the git work for you. To serve your md files as a traditional wiki in browsers, there's a git backed wiki named Gollum that also uses md files in a basic folder structure. https://github.com/gollum/gollum https://github.com/gollum/gollum You can see where I'm going with this. Gollum doesn't have user authentication or anything fancy, it just renders and edits md files. I tried it. There didn't seem to be a difference between Obsidian's and Gollum's markdown. When I committed my entire Obsidian vault to a git repo, I could still choose to have Gollum serve the entire vault, or just a subdirectory in the repo. I could also disable all editing in Gollum. While Obsidian is working directly with the md files, Gollum doesn't update until I actually commit the changes. Obsidian is basically an IDE for my wiki now. I was mostly satisfied with Joplin syncing to OneDrive prior to today's experiment. But now I think Obsidian + Git + Gollum deserves a closer look. It might be a bit overkill for my personal wiki, but it could work in a team setting if everyone works on the wiki like they would a normal git project.

by buro9 5y ago

jka 5y ago

Have you heard of / explored Athens Research[1] (brief summarization: open source, multiplayer-if-cloud-or-self-hosted, YC-backed)? [1] - https://www.athensresearch.org/ https://www.athensresearch.org/

dotancohen 5y ago

> A markdown driven wiki with Git This is exactly what I do. Though lately I've been transitioning to org-mode for non-personal notes as I don't need them on mobile. Your users can use any Markdown editor that they like. But one person should be responsible for creating new documents, so that there will be consistency in naming and placing in the hierarchy. Naming things is hard, leave that part up to the Knowledge Base owner.

mplanchard 5y ago
On iOS, PlainOrg and BeOrg do a good job of making your org notes readable, searchable, and (basically) editable. I have heard there are good apps for Android as well, but I can’t vouch for them personally.
- xenodium 5y ago
  Hey, nice surprise to see Plain Org mentioned (author here). Glad you find it useful.
  - mplanchard 5y ago
    I’ve been using it since beta! It’s a great app, and I’m grateful to you for making it!
denton-scratch 5y ago
> leave that part up to the Knowledge Base owner. Well, that's against the philosophy of a wiki. Also, in a small team, nobody is the "knowledgebase owner" - he's just another developer. Putting a human in the workflow creates friction. But I'm totally with you on the "naming things" problem. A full-blown corporate knowledge management system is a repository you can throw anything into - invoices, emails, memos, reports, etc.; the system will automatically generate a knowledge taxonomy and article summaries. But such systems require much more maintenance effort than something simple like a wiki, and are overkill for a small team of developers.
kaycebasques 5y ago
One lesson learned from leading https://web.dev https://web.dev is that a lot of people, even technical ones, aren't comfortable with git + Markdown. And then there are people who are comfortable with it but feel that it's too much friction for simple docs updates.
- dotancohen 5y ago
  For those who are uncomfortable with Git: My personal git notes repo has this script right there in the document root: $ cat ~/Notes/sync.sh #!/usr/bin/env bash git add * git commit -am "$(hostname)" git pull git push echo '' git status That's good for 99% of my own use - and I'm a technical user. You can leave those last two lines off and redirect stdout to /dev/null. If there's an error on "sync" the user can call you over to handle what will likely be either a merge conflict or a network issue. Even for Windows users you can probably wrap that in a .bat file to be double-clicked on the desktop. And there are a ton of WYSIWYG Markdown editors. I've used Typora in the past.

tempest_ 5y ago

WikiJS can store its files in git (https://docs.requarks.io/storage/git https://docs.requarks.io/storage/git) though it is not exactly easy to run as a stand alone app.

therealasdf 5y ago

AzureDevops wiki is exactly that. A git repo for markdown files

polote 5y ago

Simpplr is in my opinion an inferior tool to Confluence or Notion. It works mostly well for static information and as a enterprise search tool, but won't help improving the underlying culture. As for you ask, the best solution that I've found, is to let people document things on Github and index those documents in another tool. That way there is no duplication, you let people use the tool they know, can use Markdown, but still benefit from searching, assigning owner, up to date date, rights ... That's how we do it at Dokkument

yabones 5y ago

My solution (for personal notes etc) is to make a git repo with markdown files, then render it all with mkdocs on every push. In the past it was just a cron job running on a dumb little webserver (git pull && mkdocs build) to push the new changes every x minutes. Nowadays it's a bit more sophisticated with netlify building on main & PRs. Both are completely valid! Obviously it's not user-friendly at all. Only people who know how to use git can use it, which isn't great for collaboration with non-techie folks. Ideally, I'd build a little editor widget that could be embedded in the page...

discardedrefuse 5y ago

I just spent some time looking at this. There's no reason you can't use Obsidian with git. Obsidian just saves md files in a basic folder structure. You can git init in the root of your Obsidian vault directory (.gitignore your .obsidian folder). There's even an "Obsidian Git" community plugin that does the git work for you. To serve your md files as a traditional wiki in browsers, there's a git backed wiki named Gollum that also uses md files in a basic folder structure. https://github.com/gollum/gollum https://github.com/gollum/gollum You can see where I'm going with this. Gollum doesn't have user authentication or anything fancy, it just renders and edits md files. I tried it. There didn't seem to be a difference between Obsidian's and Gollum's markdown. When I committed my entire Obsidian vault to a git repo, I could still choose to have Gollum serve the entire vault, or just a subdirectory in the repo. I could also disable all editing in Gollum. While Obsidian is working directly with the md files, Gollum doesn't update until I actually commit the changes. Obsidian is basically an IDE for my wiki now. I was mostly satisfied with Joplin syncing to OneDrive prior to today's experiment. But now I think Obsidian + Git + Gollum deserves a closer look. It might be a bit overkill for my personal wiki, but it could work in a team setting if everyone works on the wiki like they would a normal git project.