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I now realize that I think of a 'wiki' as being collaborative specifically in ways where contributions are solicited rather than say, a knowledge base or some

by laurex 2y ago

I now realize that I think of a 'wiki' as being *collaborative* specifically in ways where contributions are solicited rather than say, a knowledge base or some other linked-or-related-note system as described here. I do not think of my Obsidian or Notion instances as "wikis" though I do have public sets of notes in some instances. I can "add someone" to it to collaborate but there is no way for a general reader to submit proposals to add or change information. Is there another term that specifically makes that distinction?

nox101 2y ago
Once upon a time a team I was on used Lotus Notes to document and coordinate the design of our project. What I liked was that we had a hierarchy of folders with documents and anytime someone updated a document it would appear in bold (and its folder and its folder's folder etc). This meant, it was easy to see at a glance, what had been updated. Since that time, teams have used wikis and or other systems. None of them provide that feature of highlighting what's been updated.
cxr 2y ago
> I do not think of my Obsidian or Notion instances as "wikis" Because they're not. There's a weird thing that happened with the word "wiki" where wikis appeared, and then a project came along with the purpose of using a wiki build an encyclopedia, and then people who were confused about which aspect exactly is what made it a wiki vs what it was about it that made it an encyclopedia decided to start going around referring to all sorts of things that couldn't remotely be described as a wiki (but could loosely be described as an "encyclopedia of <X>") as a wiki, anyway. Previously: > These people are not building a personal wiki—they're building a personal _encyclopedia_. That's what they're doing. An "encyclopedia of me"[...] It's like if you lived your whole life in a part of the world where iced coffee isn't consumed (and other types of coffee only rarely), then when it's introduced to your people it's to great fanfare, and for no good reason a subset of your countrymen start calling all sorts of unrelated things "ice", whether ice is involved or not. Their sole motivation? The thing they're referring to is a coffee product. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38816853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38816853>

I now realize that I think of a 'wiki' as being *collaborative* specifically in ways where contributions are solicited rather than say, a knowledge base or some

by laurex 2y ago

nox101 2y ago

Once upon a time a team I was on used Lotus Notes to document and coordinate the design of our project. What I liked was that we had a hierarchy of folders with documents and anytime someone updated a document it would appear in bold (and its folder and its folder's folder etc). This meant, it was easy to see at a glance, what had been updated. Since that time, teams have used wikis and or other systems. None of them provide that feature of highlighting what's been updated.

cxr 2y ago

> I do not think of my Obsidian or Notion instances as "wikis" Because they're not. There's a weird thing that happened with the word "wiki" where wikis appeared, and then a project came along with the purpose of using a wiki build an encyclopedia, and then people who were confused about which aspect exactly is what made it a wiki vs what it was about it that made it an encyclopedia decided to start going around referring to all sorts of things that couldn't remotely be described as a wiki (but could loosely be described as an "encyclopedia of <X>") as a wiki, anyway. Previously: > These people are not building a personal wiki—they're building a personal _encyclopedia_. That's what they're doing. An "encyclopedia of me"[...] It's like if you lived your whole life in a part of the world where iced coffee isn't consumed (and other types of coffee only rarely), then when it's introduced to your people it's to great fanfare, and for no good reason a subset of your countrymen start calling all sorts of unrelated things "ice", whether ice is involved or not. Their sole motivation? The thing they're referring to is a coffee product. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38816853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38816853>