An outline is one of the best ways to organize a lengthy writing or one's thinking, but is it the best way to organize a free form database? I would like to throw this question out for discussion.

Tree organizers have become the canonical free form database, but Microsoft is said to be moving away from hierarchy in organizing the interface file system in Longhorn. For accessing information, as opposed to presenting it or systematizing it, flat associative forms may surpass hierarchy in ease of use. Why have been your experiences with hierarchical organizers compared to associative ones?

The question is immediately pressing for me, because I want to decide on whether a) to buy a license to ADM and organize professional and academic information in what I think is the most powerful outliner currently available versus b) using a database organized with keywords--Bitsmith's Personal KnowBase seems to be the most mature product of this sort; or c) use Microsoft's ultra-free form OneNote.

Hierarchy doesn't exclude key words. There is no logical reason key words cannot be superimposed on a hierarchical system, which is what ADM 3 (in advanced beta) allows. But while there is no logic excluding key word organization from an outliner, there may be pragmatic basis for a prejudice against such a hybrid. It seems to me one may over time lose track of which relationships one is trying to capture with a hierarchy and which otherwise. Plus there's the additional time spent in work other than actually writing. Opinions?

Stephen,

Thank you for bringing up this topic, which seems central to determining the effectiveness of an information organizer. I have struggled with it over time, shifting my interest back and forth between the hierarchical and keyword approaches. The problem with the hierarchical approach, in my opinion, is that I find that my information tree grows quickly and soon is overwhelming. It also requires you to put only one major qualifying assignment to any one item -- the node under which it resides.

So I tried Personal Knowbase, which is attractive in many ways. But I quickly found that in order to use that sort of system effectively, you need to give each item many keywords, and my list of keywords was soon longer than my list of items. Also, you need to anticipate how you will want to classify items well in advance of actually retrieving them, sometimes not easy to do. The context of the information may change over time, but you can't easily go back to your information and reclassify it to suit a new interest or project that you didn't anticipate when you were adding the information to your database.

I have found that Zoot allows you to both use a hierarchical approach and a keyword approach. Its lack of text formatting limits its usefulness, however. InfoSelect uses a hierarchical approach, but also has a great search capability that is pretty speedy and efficient, so finding information is a snap. It isn't so great for allowing you to uncover unexpected relationships in your data.

So I haven't found the perfect solution yet. I had some hope for ADM, and maybe the new version will come through. I did try a beta edition of version 3.0 and I wasn't as thrilled as I'd hoped to be, but maybe I didn't explore it enough.

Keep us posted as you learn more about ADM, should you decide to try it.

Steve Z.

Greatly enjoying the discussion, though as a non-Steve, I feel reluctant to contribute. Some randoms:

*I've used (and paid for) ADM, because there's a great idea lurking back there somewhere. I've been completely unable to integrate it into my working life, maybe because it's high-concept and I'm not. I agree the interface is gaudy and a bit cheap-looking; that can be fixed.

*Outlining doesn't represent the best free-form database organization. I think they're antithetical. That's why, I guess, I've had little success with products which combine the two approaches (like ADM) and loved passionately focused software including Ready! and GrandView (outliners); Tornado Notes (DOS predecessor to InfoSelect) and MemoryMate (free-form text database program).

*Some of this stuff strikes me as so eccentric as to be unusable (Literary Machine springs to mind). I enjoy speculating about the mind behind the software, but give up quickly when I try to work with it.

*Maybe searching for the unified field theory of info management is a waste of time. A good outliner helps me write, textbases can store all kinds of random stuff I need, and a paper address book with a nice leather cover smells better than a PIM.

Best,

JP

Stephen D. -

You're flying high here....not sure I'm getting you. Would keywords function as "what if" markers, around which to build alternative forms of the same outlines? The same way you'd plug in different numbers to create different spreadsheet scenarios?

You're completely right about ADM. The templates are silly, and in no way demonstrate the software's power. The software's creators do indeed seem reluctant (unable?) to convey the full breadth and power of their own baby.

I've never used a Mac; your comparision of More 3.1 to ADM was unexpected and interesting. The universal affection for More 3.1 expressed in this forum has made me wish I'd experienced it.

Lastly, I'm still thinking about the question you pose at the top of this thread. Suppose we completely ignore the existence of all the software tools discussed so thoroughly here. What if we just concentrate on the work we do, and how we do it. We outline to write coherent and organized documents, and deploy information (retrieved from databases?) to flesh out our writing. So outlining (hieracrhy) *must* come first. Secondarily, keywords inside the outline can link to other information and turn those skeletal outline elements into full sentences/thoughts. So when you say "Hierarchy doesn't exclude key words" you're absolutely right. I just think that the outline (hierarchy) must always come first.

Organizing thoughts for writing and storing/retrieving information are different activities, and I think these deliberations (and all that powerful, confusing software) confirm that. Fun to think about, though!

JP

Some thoughts on this discussion.

Since last fall I have primarily used for my info needs two programs -- ADM 3 in Beta and Ariadne in its latest Beta form. Both programs are outline based, Ariadne's looking more like Info Select.

But, unlike IS, both ADM and Ariadne provide keywords. ADM's execution of keywords is more sophisticated, and when ADM 3 goes public, will I predict, become one of its most-used features. Someone noted InControl: when I moved to PCs from the Mac World 18 months ago, I looked hard for a program like InControl that combined columns and outline. Not until ADM began to develop version 3 did I find columns (except for ECCO, which didn't meet other needs of mine); ADM has brought the columns notion a long way in a short time and while users will ask for refinements, I think the overall concept will go over well when the product goes public.

For those who haven't used keywords the concept may not sound all that useful. But believe me, it is one good way of getting beyond what someone else has mentioned as the problem of only being able to assign location to a piece of info in an outline.

Re ADM's interface: I find it is unique, different, and aesthetically pleasing. I like the fact it doesn't look like every other Windows program.

As ADM's metadata capabilities develop I probably will use it more and more, though I very much like Ariadne. Ariadne allows you to place a comment with each note or other type of entry in the outline, and that is a very handy feature. I find Ariadne does the core outline piece of IS better than IS does it. Ariadne also has a calendar feature that I don't use, but have tested and which seems OK.

Kudos to the independent software makers who work so hard with both ADM and Ariadne.

Daly

An outline is one of the best ways to organize a lengthy writing or one's thinking, but is it the best way to organize a free form database? I would like to throw this question out for discussion.

This thread is fascinating; a warm personal thanks to all contributors, for all the information and food for thought I've collected in a short time.

I'd like to propose a different way to tackle this question; I assume that regardless of our actual professional interest, what we are trying to do when using these information organisation tools, is represent reality in an abstract way.

This process can be inwards-oriented when we are simply collecting information we find interesting, or outwards-oriented when we are initially developing our own ideas; finally, it might be a combination of the two, i.e. when researching a specific subject and interactively building a thesis/theme/premise/story from what we gather about it and the ideas sparked thereof.

Now, if the above holds, then the 'best' structured way to go about it is to actually try to copy reality's structures.

Reality is built around networks and the power law.

Networks are non-hierarchical; as such, TheBrain, Cmap Tools, BrainStorm or a free-form database could provide an adequate model. However, real-world networks follow the power law: certain nodes, i.e. 'keywords', are much more popular than the rest. In fact, their popularity is self-replicating; the rich get richer and the popular actors get the best roles, to use the Small World Network paradigm.

(For the fascinating background to all this, I suggest Albert-Laszlo Barabasi's "Linked: The New Science of Networks" and Mark Buchanan's "Nexus: Small Worlds and the grounbreaking Theory of Networks", or simply a goggle search of Small World Networks)

Therefore, when are going about researching, we might start with few premises and organise our information in free form; even dropping everything in a directory might do at this stage.

In the long run, it pays to build hierarchies around those nodes/cocepts we find to be more popular (i.e. by indexing our free form collection), in order to be able to easily identify the greater picture; otherwise, things get overwhelming very quickly.

A collection of interlinked Mind Maps, where the maps' central concepts are the most popular keywords, would probably represent the best informational analogy of the real-world. Given that Mind Maps can be reduced to outlines, a collection of outliner hierarchies would do; however, the top concepts in each outline would not 'fit' into a hierarchy themselves.

To see relationships between the top concepts, a non-hierarchical graphical representation tool such as TheBrain or Cmap Tools would be more useful. Nodes then might be outliner files, provided the outliner we use supports internal/external hyperlinks to provide for the least popular relations.

Cheers
/ alx