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by benrbray 1874 days ago
Some other knowledge-graph type projects for comparison:

> Metacademy - "Package Manager for Knowledge" - https://metacademy.org/

> MathLingua - language for easily creating a collection of mathematical knowledge, including definitions, theorems, axioms, and conjectures, in a format designed to be easy and fun to read and write. - https://www.mathlingua.org/

> Learn X in Y minutes - https://learnxinyminutes.com/

> Learn X by doing Y - https://aquadzn.github.io/learn-x-by-doing-y/

> Awesome Lists - https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome

> ncatlab - https://ncatlab.org/ - I visit the page I want to understand and make sure I understand the meaning of most of the hyperlinks in the first paragraph before I attempt to understand the rest

Many people are also starting to use the bidirectional-link style of note-taking to create their own knowledge graphs. I'm curious to see what sort of tools will emerge in the future to help people share the graphs they've created.

It's easy enough to find reading lists online for a topic, but one of the hardest things about learning a new subject, especially without the help of a teacher, is learning what NOT to spend time on and why.

2 comments

"Many people are also starting to use the bidirectional-link style of note-taking to create their own knowledge graphs. I'm curious to see what sort of tools will emerge in the future to help people share the graphs they've created." Roam research and clones...I started looking into that but I haven't setup anything yet. Would be keen to hear/read any testimonies
I use roamlikes as a combined bookmark / note-taking system.

I tend to spend a few minutes every day taking some interesting links from HN or elsewhere (that I may or may not read that day) and creating entries for them in my personal wiki system.

(This is how I keep track of collections of related links -- for my post above, I just searched for [[knowledge-graph]] tags in my wiki system and copied the results into an HN comment)

I find this most useful for topics that I know I'd like to explore in the future, but just don't have time for right now. The Google search signal-to-noise ratio has lessened so much that I know I'll never be able to find a specific link again unless I remember the exact title, so it's useful to have a way to quickly assign tags to a URL and forget about it until later. Tagging systems are much better than a hierarchical bookmark system for recall later [1].

Then, when I take the time to read about a certain topic, I start taking notes in the .md file corresponding to the appropriate keyword or citation.

The best part is discovering new connections between topics -- sometimes I'll type a [[keyword]] in my notes, and see that several of my existing notes already link to it.

I'm still learning how to best use a system like this, it does take some effort to maintain. Right now what works for me is really short, concise notes about very specific keywords to start. Then I'll do a "synthesis" pass where I'll summarize the relationships between several keywords all in one document, and then make all the keyword nodes in the graph point to the synthesized document instead.

[1] Nayuki, "Designing Better File Organization around Tags, Not Hierarchies" -- https://www.nayuki.io/page/designing-better-file-organizatio...

I use roam myself. Mind sharing the alternative(s) you use and find most useful? Would be interested in learning what roamlikes others prefer and why.
I use my own not-yet-ready-for-release app called Noteworthy [1], but here is a list of some of the roamlikes I find most inspiring:

> Athens Research -- free and open source roam competitor made by someone who failed an interview for a job at roam :) -- https://github.com/athensresearch/athens

> Obsidian -- free but non-open wikilink system based on Markdown files -- https://obsidian.md/

> Foam -- Markdown-based knowledge management system based entirely around VS Code extensions -- https://foambubble.github.io/foam/

> Neuron/Cerveau -- Markdown-based Zettelkasten and static site generator written in Haskell -- https://neuron.zettel.page/

Some other honorable mentions that I can't be bothered to dig up links for: Madoko, RemNote, Notion, TiddlyWiki, Cerveau, Zettlr, Notable

[1] https://github.com/benrbray/noteworthy

Awesome, thanks so much!
Thanks a lot - this thing is great! https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/Gravity+and+Grace