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Ask HN: What is the value of a one-person wiki?

22 points by Phileosopher ↗ HN
I have a history of commonplacing (i.e., hoarding key ideas) that predates my tech career[0].

Now that I'm working with my passion, I've been curating content and distilling it into a legible output[1].

The problem, though, is that (like before) I've now collected and broadly categorized >5,000 articles, e-books, YouTube videos, talks, and walkthroughs about the potential domains I'll be working with. I've also been sidelining thousands of the elements into another "toolbox"[2].

My big question is whether this adds value to anyone else or if I'm simply building an elaborate hobby. I'm fine if this is a pet project, but I want a straight answer from someone I don't know.

[0] https://adequate.life and https://gainedin.site

[1] https://techsplained.xyz

[2] https://github.com/Phileosopher/toolbox/

12 comments

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taubek
Sharing is caring. If you have done the research and you, have taken time to create this collection you are saving time for someone that will come across it.

Do you use any tools for web site analytics? Do you have visitors?

Phileosopher
On any given day I get 0-3 visitors.

I've gotten a sour taste for the destruction of good writing with "Here's how your 802.11a/b/g networking card works with networking concepts for easy how to network" spam that populates search engines, and I've seen this never-ending SEO arms race that seems to be its own job that takes as much time as the making of the content, and I don't know if it's worth doing something I hate if I don't know why I'm doing it.

Mostly, I want to write to simply understand, but I've had delusions of grandeur that this may be more valuable to someone, but it's hard to know if anyone legitimately shares my endeavors to broadly understand the way I do.

I imagine other people have this problem: you work on a project for years, the purpose morphs a few times, and you're left wondering why you're still doing it. This isn't really a business I can "sell", but I'd feel a tremendous sense of loss if I deleted all of it on a whim.

Edit: clarified why I'm a bit SEO-averse

taubek
What about contributing some of the content to Wikipedia, or sites like Quora?
Phileosopher
That's a great idea. I have done it in the past somewhat, but fallen out of practice. It's organic SEO I can stomach, and that may be the cause of my lack of feedback right there.
grana2codes
I bookmarked it, looks interesting to comb through
runjake
I use Obsidian, write atomic notes[1], and link them together via note links and tagging. It works much like a personal wiki.

I don't really put a lot of thought into it and I don't go looking for new solutions, at this point. Obsidian stores its notes as files and Markdown files in a directory, on the backend. It is git-able for eg. GitBook, GitHub Wiki, etc.

https://obsidian.md

1. Small notes on a specific little thing.

kusuriya
its always a bit helpful to have this sort of second brain especially public, its like being able to pick a strangers brain when you have a problem they might know about, it also helps you remember without remembering.

Ive done something like this semi private for a while and have recently migrated to doing it with a program called logseq. Maybes this will give me the courage to publish it some.

nikolqy
Sounds like it’d be a personal thing, but I’m sure it would he discovered by people and maybe utilized. I thought of doing a wiki like wikipedia, but making it not propaganda. Figured it’d help people but really I think it kinda was just gonna end up being a hobby of mine. If it interests you enough to make one, why not do it? It’s not gonna disappear and it’ll always be there for you or anyone that finds it. Knowledge is knowledge and I love finding smaller sites with helpful information. Really, I think it’ll be both for you. It’ll add value to whoever finds it, and it’ll be a hobby for you. But don’t do something like that if you aren’t motivated enough to would be my best advice.
nicbou
I’ve been publicly documenting solutions to problems I faced since at least 10 years. I know it’s valuable because I find a lot of value in similar posts from other people. About 10,000 people per month find my content through Google.

The value is that it will save a lot of people a lot of time, especially if you were the first to document the solution.

I disabled comments on my websites, but those helpful posts got lots of positive replies from people whose butt it saved.

drakonka
Same here, although I go through phases of high and low activity. When I was learning to code I would write daily blog posts about problems I ran into and how I fixed them. At first I was unsure, since I thought these things were just too basic for people to care about. But writing also helped me process and internalize the things I learned, so I did it anyway. I got so many nice emails and comments over the years from people who found some random tip I posted helpful for their own projects.