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Ask HN: Do you keep a personal knowledgebase? With What?

23 points by c0nfused ↗ HN
Basically, I have this problem where over the course of time I misplace old data and documentation. This then adds hours to the time it takes to pick up on a project that I haven't touched in a long time. It seems like the sort of problem everyone else runs into and that someone has a solid solution that I haven't run across yet. Ideally, this would not be limited to software development. After all, it's nice to be able to lookup the code to a lock box rather than text someone at 4 am.

I have tried a number of things from paper notebooks, text files in folders, trello, google docs, various databases, and various wikis. Most of them have good things going for them but there hasn't been a clear winner in the decade or so I have been playing with this.

So, I thought I would ask what people use and what you liked about it.

18 comments

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DamnYuppie
I use Microsoft One Note. It works well for keeping my thoughts together and keeping notes and links that either support or refute an idea.
mikro2nd
Zim Wiki.
guilhas
Like it a lot. What is the structure you use?
mikro2nd
Not sure what you mean by 'structure' tbh. I have numerous wikis ranging from my generic, catch-all 'Notes' wiki to subject-specific, project-specific and (more recently) one that takes advantage of the excellent Journalling features of Zim.

I shy away from much hierarchical organisation (on the assumption that's what you meant by 'structure') being a long-time user and aficionado of the Original Wiki (Ward's Wiki). All I want is the simplified markup and (mostly) the wikilinks-made-by-CamelCase.

beepbeepbeep1
I agree there is no clear winner.

I mainly use Evernote. I'm trying my best to use org-mode more and sync with Google Drive as Evernote is subscription based and it comes down to do I want to keep all my information with a third party who i don't know what their backup policy is etc. Unfortunately I tend to fall back to Evernote.

The reason I mostly use Evernote and I think key for any alternative is search, the ability and ease of finding content. Evernote is primarily searched based and using tags/free text it's fairly powerful. Most stuff goes in to a singke notebook.

DoreenMichele
Private blogs. Accessible to only me or me and a few other people, depending on the project/subject.
samlewis
http://jrnl.sh/ is nice

The low amount effort to add an entry allows me to jot down thoughts, conversations etc easily which makes me actually do it.

Having it save as a plain .txt file is nice for versioning/backup as well.

dlahoda
my texts in gitlab trying various org modes and tasks and mindmaps + browser bookmark extension with tags and commenting + copy of medias in seafile or syncthing

and what ever project enforces, isolating by folders or virtual machines

acutesoftware
I don't think the main issue is what tool you use is, but rather where your master copy lives.

I was vigilant using txt/docs in a nice structured folder setup on a local server, but as I started using Google docs / Evernote / Trello, etc I found that information was no longer searchable in one place - despite copying and synching efforts, this is still the case.

So instead of fighting it and wasting a lot of time, I keep the metadata of my personal knowledge base as the 'master'.

For work projects - Trello using my work login and Outlook For open source - github is the master knowledge base Docs - currently Google docs, but soon moving to my own site.

Local NAS is really only for backup of the above stuff now.

nextos
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned org-mode yet.

It's an extremely good tool for this.

ismail
My personal knowledge base is mostly in Evernote. Things like documents(pdf,word) are sitting in Dropbox.

Have not been able to find something that consolidated everything.

I have a system which has been discussed at:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16596569

Currently looking for tips on research paper highlighting, notes and reference management.

albertlie
I used Slite (YC W18) for keeping my personal knowledge base. The reasons I use Slite other than Google Keep or Google Drive are because it's simple to use, it's like Slack so very easy to rearrange and organize like the structure that I want (this is the most important part of knowledge base IMO), and it supports markdown better than google docs (most of my knowledge base are software development related, so I'm a big fan of markdown).

Last but not least, for business presentation, I'll link the Google Slides on the Slite so every information will be centralized and organized from Slite.

albertlie
Furthermore, Slite is optimized for sharing as well. So this can be used for both personal knowledge and knowledge sharing