At last -- my review of ConnectedText as an outliner

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Oct 25, 2012 at 07:46 AM

Dr Andus wrote:
>Although wikis are often hailed as our liberators from
>hierarchical thinking, it is possible and can be even useful to view a wiki as a
>hierarchical structure.

To be clear, I do not disagree with the above statement. However, same as with TheBrain, the unlimited degrees of freedom of connection are in my view non-conducive to (obviously) hierarchical structures. In outliners that can support cloning and/or tagging one can actually re-create the same relationships as in a complex wiki. Yet conceptually the structure is still a hierarchical outline.

In an outliner, the (limited) outline is a starting frame of obvious structure, to which one can create ‘exceptions’, e.g. cloned items or links to other points in the hierarchy. In a wiki, the (unlimited) relationships are the starting point, and these you must maintain under strict control in order to produce an (obviously) structured hierarchy.

To take another example, one can use LEGO blocks to create furniture. However, LEGO is not particularly conducive to furniture building, nor would it be ‘fair’ to compare LEGO to IKEA as furniture building frameworks. However, one could well write a guide to using LEGO for furniture building without needing to go into such a comparison.

I.e. my comment was mostly meant in respect to Steve’s choice to not compare ConnectedText with the other outliners within the same context.