[HN Gopher] Contextualise: Manage your knowledge
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Contextualise: Manage your knowledge
Author : brettkromkamp
Score : 102 points
Date : 2020-02-09 15:38 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| ivan_ah wrote:
| Very interesting. I always thought of knowledge as a graph (as
| opposed to a document or a tree), and browsing the graph of
| knowledge will be really useful for learners.
|
| I think the obstacle is more on the authoring side (how to
| build/edit graphs as easily as plain documents). There is also
| standard taxonomy challenges, about choosing the "types" of the
| nodes and the associations (values of the `instance_of` of the
| `Association`s in TopicDB). If the platform restricts things to a
| fixed taxonomy, you lose expressiveness, but on the other hand if
| you let users create any-which category they want things can grow
| quickly out of hand).
|
| A related project in that space is https://metacademy.org/ whose
| code is here https://github.com/metacademy/metacademy-application
|
| I was working on an app similar to contextualize a while back,
| but had to pause because of other projects, but I hope to come
| back to it soon. I hand't gotten very far on it, so maybe I can
| contribute to contextualize. My main focus is on building tools
| for serialization/deserialization of the graph data to a text-
| based format that can be stored in git repos so that multiple
| authors can collaborate on building out a knowledge base using
| pull requests, see data fixtures here
| https://github.com/minireference/structure-api/tree/master/d... )
| brettkromkamp wrote:
| Really like the idea of a version-controlled text-based graph
| format. I'll definitely take a look at the GitHub repo. Thanks
| for your feedback.
| brettkromkamp wrote:
| Any contribution to Contextualise would be greatly appreciated
| ;)
| lidHanteyk wrote:
| Graphs aren't enough; we need path equivalence and multiple
| edges. We need categories.
| brettkromkamp wrote:
| Could you elaborate a bit on this. Sounds like an interesting
| take.
| lidHanteyk wrote:
| When I'm mapping out a narrative arc, sometimes I will want
| to indicate that some action is monotone or idempotent, or
| that it is isomorphic or reversible from some other state.
| Those properties end up being path equivalences.
|
| Similarly, sometimes there can be multiple social relations
| between characters within a narrative setting; somebody might
| be both a friend and a parent, for example. Properly
| modelling this requires allowing multiple distinct edges
| between vertices.
|
| And, finally, technically any hypergraph with path
| equivalence is a category.
|
| When I'm doing narrative analysis on a whiteboard, the
| diagrams that I draw are category-theoretic, not graph-
| theoretic, and I'd like to be able to bring that richness
| into my narrative-mapping tool without having to flatten
| everything down into annotated graphs.
| brettkromkamp wrote:
| I need to think a bit more about what you are saying. This
| is a very interesting point of view. Can I come back to you
| on this?
| brettkromkamp wrote:
| When installing Contextualise, please install TopicDB (the topic
| maps engine on top of which Contextualise is built) directly from
| GitHub. Instructions to install Contextualise and TopicDB are
| provided, here:
| https://github.com/brettkromkamp/contextualise#install-the-d...
| ripperdoc wrote:
| You should build it into the Dockerfile so it's easy to try
| out.
| brettkromkamp wrote:
| Unfortunately my Docker know-how is severely lacking. I'm
| hoping that someone will help out with Docker support. In the
| meantime, I will try to get up to speed with Docker to be
| able to fix the current Docker setup.
| ktpsns wrote:
| If you are interested in this kind of problems, you might want to
| learn about MediaWiki (the software behind wikipedia) and the
| SemanticMediaWiki extension. That allows for extracting and
| representing formal knowledge about wiki pages. It's quite
| powerful and allows for programming quite sophisticated databases
| ontop of MediaWiki (kind of in-system effect). Also WikiData is a
| project/MediaWiki extension worth exploring.
| brettkromkamp wrote:
| Thanks for the tip. I'll take a look. What I am trying to
| accomplish with Contextualise is a straight-forward UI on top
| of a powerful, but still conceptually simple data model (topic
| maps).
| nextos wrote:
| For personal knowledge, most graph-based ideas were pioneered by
| Niklas Luhmann in his Zettelkasten system. This system is
| described with lots of detail in [1] and made him extraordinarily
| productive.
|
| Essentially, Luhmann had one small card per semantic unit. Cards
| had alphanumeric IDs. Cards backlinked to other cards using said
| IDs. He also used a card branching mechanism implemented in IDs
| as e.g. 123 -> 123a -> 123a1 which he called Folgezettel.
|
| Lastly, he also had cards whose role was mostly to connect topics
| by serving as a link hub.
|
| It's a really simple system that you can implement using plain
| text, Org, Markdown or some note taking application like Apple
| Notes or OneNote plus a few conventions.
|
| After trying many things, for personal use I think nothing beats
| plain text (or a plain text format). I don't need a server, I can
| easily sync things, and it's really future proof.
|
| I have also scaled this kind of setup to larger organizations,
| albeit using a more classical wiki-like approach (read longer
| articles instead of small semantic unit cards). For example,
| GitLab has excellent continuous integration. You can use an Emacs
| or Pandoc inside a Docker to export Org or Markdown files into an
| HTML.
|
| [1] https://takesmartnotes.com/
| brettkromkamp wrote:
| Thanks for your feedback. Genuinely appreciated. I'll take a
| look takesmartnotes.com.
| bordercases wrote:
| It should be possible to implement a form of PageRank on a ZK
| system, non?
| nextos wrote:
| Absolutely, ZK is essentially hypertext. Text in cards plus
| regular links and branched links to other cards
| (Folgezettel).
| bloopernova wrote:
| org-mode is immediately where my mind went when I saw this
| story on HN.
|
| It's an interesting problem domain that I think benefits from
| having so many people approach it from different directions,
| like the person you mention, OP, and all the people that hack
| on GTD apps, or org-mode customizations, etc etc.
|
| I don't really have any valuable insight in this, just a
| mishmash of documents with TODOs, notes, plans and knowledge. I
| wonder how disruptive it would be if we had a highly focused AI
| that really understood how to organize people?
| nextos wrote:
| Org is great because it's plain text, but at the same time
| offers outlining, timestamps, tables, links and lots of other
| features. Following Emacs tradition, it doesn't impose any
| workflow on you. It just gives you some primitives to build
| the system you want.
|
| A great feature of Org are programmatic views of your data,
| possibly from many files at the same time. Some are already
| implemented, but still customizable, like Org Agenda. I use
| Org Agenda to have a Kanban-like view of my projects. I can
| simply see all WIP tasks, approaching deadlines and events in
| a little plain text window.
|
| That's, I think, the minimum viable productivity system. You
| have a list of projects with tasks, some deadlines, some
| events and some inbox. You select a few tasks to do every
| day, like Ivy Lee suggested, and you do them. You want to see
| these plus deadlines and scheduled events which can be easily
| achieved with Org Agenda.
|
| A GTD-like system would tag tasks with contexts, and offer
| some context-specific views, but I find that's too much work.
| Another pitfall of GTD, in my opinion, is that it doesn't
| encourage WIP limits which eventually makes it overwhelming.
|
| I credit GTD with popularizing the need for an inbox, the
| task-centric view to time management, and the distinction
| between tasks, tasks with deadlines and events. But I think
| GTD leads to too much planning waste, projects broken into
| tasks that get constantly outdated.
| brettkromkamp wrote:
| I have been thinking about incorporating initial AI/machine
| learning support in Contextualise including auto-tagging and
| relationship (associations) recommendations.
| gbasin wrote:
| Check out https://roamresearch.com, great UX for implementing a
| similar system using outlining
| brettkromkamp wrote:
| Thanks for the tip. I'll check it out.
| mud_dauber wrote:
| I tried my best to use Google Keep for a couple of years &
| finally gave up. I exported all my notes (maybe a thousand cards,
| each with multiple links, text notes & image snips) into a
| Jekyll-based static site on GitHub pages.
|
| It's still a bit clunky but allows me more freedom to organize as
| I see fit. Plus, being a public page forces me to consider
| readability.
| lowdose wrote:
| Google should invest in making keep into a auto flashcard
| learning system. It would be awesome if they integrate this
| with annotations from Google Books like Google Docs.
| jmakov wrote:
| Looks like Tiddly+graph plugin but with extra steps.
| AlphaWeaver wrote:
| Brett, thanks for this!
|
| Literally just last night I was lamenting that there was no open-
| source software similar to Roam (roamresearch.com) and how I
| didn't even know where to start if I were to make it myself.
|
| This is a great option, I can't wait to try it out!
| brettkromkamp wrote:
| You're welcome :) It's my intention to make Contextualise
| publicly available (free of charge) within the next week or
| two. I'll announce it on the project's GitHub page.
| cheschire wrote:
| Knowledge management as a career typically involves a deep focus
| on the relationship between people, process, and organization as
| much as the epistemological hierarchy of
| data/information/knowledge.
|
| I see this tool as conceptually useful, but like most knowledge
| graphs I still don't see the inherent process behind the
| transformation and relation of various nodes.
|
| Is there a layer I'm missing from the overview?
| brettkromkamp wrote:
| No, I don't think you have missed anything from the overview.
| Yes, you're right... the process to construct and maintain the
| knowledge graph is not part of the application. In that
| respect, I have been considering several related features to
| help the user with that process: 1) topic map templates that
| allow for very quick creation of a predefined taxonomy and 2)
| machine-learning for auto-tagging and recommendations for
| associations.
|
| Although the above features do not make for the complete
| process you are referring to, at least they assist users as
| part of that process.
|
| Food for thought.
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(page generated 2020-02-09 23:00 UTC)