I've been enjoying reading the posts here, for the last few weeks. I've learned about a lot of software that I had never heard about before.

I'm pretty sure that I have been aware of this site, in years past, but never had time to do a deep dive like I have recently. I'm impressed by the range of things discussed, and the depth of insight that I've seen from posters here.

I'd be interested to learn about other resources that might be available, to learn more about the range of topics, covered here.

I'm trying to capture information about the kind of tools and projects mentioned here. Google does a pretty good job of locating things based on just a name reference, but I keep thinking that there should be a web site or Wiki which would have more structured info, in one place. I'm pretty sure there are many more resources "out there", but I don't know of a good way to easily discover them. Does anyone know of any other guides or "Awesome Lists" that would complement the messages posted here?

I'm particularly interested in free, Open Source projects. I've learned of several, from messages posted here. Does anyone have pointers to others?

Thanks.

David Garner

Welcome David!

David Garner wrote:

I keep thinking that there should be a web site or Wiki
which would have more structured info, in one place. I

At least for wikis there is this
https://www.wikimatrix.org/

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/

This has many different threads , not strictly outliners or IM's.


David Garner wrote:

I've been enjoying reading the posts here, for the last few weeks. I've
learned about a lot of software that I had never heard about before.

I'm pretty sure that I have been aware of this site, in years past, but
never had time to do a deep dive like I have recently. I'm impressed by
the range of things discussed, and the depth of insight that I've seen
from posters here.

I'd be interested to learn about other resources that might be
available, to learn more about the range of topics, covered here.

I'm trying to capture information about the kind of tools and projects
mentioned here. Google does a pretty good job of locating things based
on just a name reference, but I keep thinking that there should be a web
site or Wiki which would have more structured info, in one place. I'm
pretty sure there are many more resources "out there", but I don't know
of a good way to easily discover them. Does anyone know of any other
guides or "Awesome Lists" that would complement the messages posted
here?

I'm particularly interested in free, Open Source projects. I've learned
of several, from messages posted here. Does anyone have pointers to
others?

Thanks.

David Garner

Welcome, David. Yes, this is a fun place to hang out. Right now, when it comes to some kind of comprehensive list of outliners, I'd go here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliner

But it doesn't cover the many wikis, notetaking tools, or mindmaps. Although mindmapping program lists can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concept-_and_mind-mapping_software


Wiki comparisons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_software

Welcome. For reference:

https://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/6063

Wow,

Everything old is new again, and be careful what you ask for, you might get it!

Thanks for all the replies and pointers. That's a lot to digest.

I'm now thinking about how to organize all this information and make it more readily available and approachable.

Thoughts are ranging from: I did not know Wikipedia had such a depth of information, to: how to set up a Wiki to share and keep all this information (and much more) up to date and more approachable?

Is Google Groups a good place to anchor discussions and data, or would Github be better suited? Should there be (is there already?) a non-profit organization to facilitate such efforts?

I'm not looking for a job, just a better way to access information!

Are there other approaches that I might not even be aware of?

Thanks for sharing any ideas.

Yes, it's a really very interesting forum. Nice to be part of this community

If only this forum would not have such a horrible UI, e.g. in comparison to Discourse. A little bit of crimping regarding regading the forum software might not be such a bad idea.

For instance, I cannot edit my last posting to fix the mistake in the last sentence.

And the recent thread on TheBrain made my brain hurt.

Hi Christoph,

I've actually started on a redesign of the site. The new version will look a little better (especially on mobile devices), but more importantly will include a lot of the features folks have asked for throughout the years, including the ability to edit your own posts and muting undesirable users.

Chris, that's good news. Also thank you for providing and operating this website all the years, even though I'm only a rare visitor.

Before putting too much work into this, you should consider if it's not easier to simply run a Discourse forum. It's open source and completely free if you run it on your own server. It's really powerful, modern and user-friendly, and I think it's impossible to create such a great user experience with self-made software. But I don't know how time-consuming installation, configuration and operating a Discourse forum actually is. Maybe too much. Anyway, maybe you should consider it and try it out.

I would have to agree that Discourse is awesome and I would be happy to see it used here as well.

I also agree about the thread regarding TheBrain. A good topic, but the thread was destroyed by a certain poster.

I would respectfully disagree with the suggestions to move this forum to some other platform or even with the need for any major changes or new features.

I think the success and longevity of this site is down to a large extent to its simplicity.

People don't have to be registered users to be able to read it and it has good visibility in search engines.

Sure, you could always try to move this to another platform such as Reddit or Discourse or whatever, but there is a danger that a lot of the existing users wouldn't bother or want to re-register for those sites, and search engine visibility may disappear (I don't remember ever landing on a Discourse site as the result of a Google search).

I follow this forum via an RSS feed and that works for me very well.

Maybe I'm just very old school (though I do visit some Reddit forums and have checked out Discourse).

But I recall when there was the request to split this forum, and then http://www.mypersonalproductivity.com/ was created, and I can see the last post on that was in 2012, so the same could happen when moved to Discourse etc.

Just my 2 cents...

I love Discourse since it started and improved greatly.

But I agree with the doc.

Plus, the archaic character of the forum as is, I find wonderful. I wouldn't redesign it at all. It's a classic and will stand out in time. The couple of changes Chris mentioned should be ok though if the look remains.

Any porting to new platforms, etc would in effect take the ownership and dominance in the field away from Chris just like previous talk here of starting parallel forums would.

I might not have time or inclination due to several reasons to post here anymore soon, but would like to read with the current look and format as I'm sure the silent majority I'll join do as readers.

Thanks & Best wishes.

I also agree with Dr. Andus. I like the simplicity of the forum. It might *look* dated, but it provides everything necessary for cordial conversation without the clutter common to many modern forums. Why "fix" what isn't broken?

However, I *would* like to see the forum upgraded with the ability for one user to block another user. While we can always just ignore someone who usurps the forum for his own purposes, it would be nice not to even see what he posts.

Dr Andus wrote:

I would respectfully disagree with the suggestions to move this forum to
some other platform or even with the need for any major changes or new
features.

Thanks for your feedback.

Actually I would not call this "moving", just modernizing the forum software and making it more user friendly. The URL should not be changed.

People don't have to be registered users to be able to read it and it
has good visibility in search engines.

The same holds true for Discourse forums.

(I don't remember ever landing on a Discourse site as the result of a Google search)

Maybe because most don't have "discourse" in the URL. But try googling for e.g. "On the process of making MOCs" and you willl get a link to the Discourse forum for Obsidian which you can read without login. You can try this with any other comment on that forum, they are all indexed by Google. You will also notice how active people are on that forum. I attribute that not only to the excitement about Obsidian itself, but to some extend also to the great user experience when participating in that forum.

I follow this forum via an RSS feed and that works for me very well.

Yes, I'm doing the same. Without RSS I would not be able to use this forum. But this results in me inevitably seeing all the discussions. In Discourse I can subscribe to individual categories or threads or mute individual threads.

However, I agree that changing the forum software too radically could alienate long-time users. The last thing I want is that people like you leave the forum because of that. And yes, there are always drawbacks of changing the software. You will probably have to re-register in order to be able to write. And the old forum postings would probably not be integrated and searchable in the new forum software, but maybe only made available in archived form. And it could simply be too much work to maintain the Discourse forum software and keep it up to date.

tightbeam wrote:

I also agree with Dr. Andus. I like the simplicity of the forum. It
might *look* dated, but it provides everything necessary for cordial
conversation without the clutter common to many modern forums. Why "fix"
what isn't broken?

Thanks for the feedback, tightbeam. I understand your point about "simplicity", but let me try to be the advocatus diaboli here.

One user sees it as "clutter", the other as necessary feature to make it more usable. You already gave one example: being able to mute certain users. If you ask others, they will give you other examples, and if you implement all of these, you will soon get the "clutter" that you dislike. And you would start to re-implement Discourse or other already existing software which would be a waste of time.

Isn't the whole purpose of this forum to discuss ways of "fixing" our outliner software needs? Most of the outliner tools we are currently using are all providing everything necessary and are not really "broken". Yet we are constantly trying to improve our tools or switch to newer tools (see definition of "CRIMPing" in the green navigation on the left).

I always found it somewhat astouding that people who are so eagerly discussing improvements in the usability of information management software and getting more productive, are on the other hand so content with the current forum and willing to stick with its simplicity. :)

Maybe one reason is that this forum gives us cozy feelings *because* it is so simple and stays the same while all the rest is moving. Maybe we need something like that.

This has been discussed before and several of us had raised hands for the current quaint archaic experience.

Actually, there are ways to satisfy 'almost' all wishes expressed. However time can be of the essence, discussions can easily become circular wastes of time (just needs one), and it's often wiser to sit back and see what bubbles up, and develops.

In fact merely watching this discussion without suggesting anything, is quite an interesting empirical study. So I look forward to reading further about this particular topic here. I don't have time to read most threads here but this is interesting. Not unrelated to outliner topic per se either. Kind of like a focus group for forum UX from an outliner enthusiasts' POV.

Christoph wrote:

Maybe because most don't have "discourse" in the URL. But try googling
for e.g. "On the process of making MOCs" and you willl get a link to the
Discourse forum for Obsidian which you can read without login. You can
try this with any other comment on that forum, they are all indexed by
Google. You will also notice how active people are on that forum. I
attribute that not only to the excitement about Obsidian itself, but to
some extend also to the great user experience when participating in that
forum.

If I remember correctly, Obsidian started just with Discord, and then introduced a Discourse forum. Do you have any thoughts on how adding Discourse to Discord worked for the Obsidian community?

‑Alex

Alessandro Vernet wrote:

If I remember correctly, Obsidian started just with Discord, and then
introduced a Discourse forum. Do you have any thoughts on how adding
Discourse to Discord worked for the Obsidian community?

Yes, they have both, and both are very active. Discord is for the quick, synchronous chats and ephemeral chatter, while the Discourse forum is for the slower, asynchronous exchange of ideas, and for more structured and long-living threads. It's a bit redundant to have both, but they serve somewhat different purposes and therefore it works pretty well for them. But I think Discord is not what we need here.

I am with those who favour the familiar and the simple. I enjoy the simplicity of this forum as you do, Tightbeam, and I agree with Dr Andus. As you say, why fix what isn't broken.

I have confidence that Chris understands what we need, and has a sense of how to implement improvements. None of the suggestions made here from time to time require moving to a new platform. Adopting a new platform really is a move, even if the url remains the same. I would respectfully suggest that it's not necessary to leave the software Chris has been using as long as he is able to create the changes which have been suggested here over the years.

With regard to blocking a user, while that may be necessary at times, I would prefer that ability remain with Chris or, if he wishes, someone on this forum who could act as a moderator.

Just my two cents.

Daly





tightbeam wrote:

I also agree with Dr. Andus. I like the simplicity of the forum. It
might *look* dated, but it provides everything necessary for cordial
conversation without the clutter common to many modern forums. Why "fix"
what isn't broken?

However, I *would* like to see the forum upgraded with the ability for
one user to block another user. While we can always just ignore someone
who usurps the forum for his own purposes, it would be nice not to even
see what he posts.

Daly -

Maybe "block" is the wrong word. Of course no user should have the power to block another user from the forum. But I would like to be able to "mute" or perhaps "dematerialize" a certain user so that while his posts would still appear on the forum, I wouldn't be able to see them (assuming I were logged in). Given the age of the software used for this forum, such functionality might not be available. Only Chris knows for sure.

Daly de Gagne wrote:

I am with those who favour the familiar and the simple. I enjoy the
simplicity of this forum as you do, Tightbeam, and I agree with Dr
Andus. As you say, why fix what isn't broken.

I have confidence that Chris understands what we need, and has a sense
of how to implement improvements. None of the suggestions made here from
time to time require moving to a new platform. Adopting a new platform
really is a move, even if the url remains the same. I would respectfully
suggest that it's not necessary to leave the software Chris has been
using as long as he is able to create the changes which have been
suggested here over the years.

With regard to blocking a user, while that may be necessary at times, I
would prefer that ability remain with Chris or, if he wishes, someone on
this forum who could act as a moderator.

Just my two cents.

Daly





tightbeam wrote:
I also agree with Dr. Andus. I like the simplicity of the forum. It
>might *look* dated, but it provides everything necessary for cordial
>conversation without the clutter common to many modern forums. Why
"fix"
>what isn't broken?
>
>However, I *would* like to see the forum upgraded with the ability for
>one user to block another user. While we can always just ignore someone
>who usurps the forum for his own purposes, it would be nice not to even
>see what he posts.

Thanks to all for the ideas and feedback.

The look and feel will be very similar, just slightly more contemporary, mainly as a result of using a CSS framework to make everything work well on mobile. The color scheme and general layout will remain the same. All URLs will be the same, and no one will have to register again or anything like that.

I think there is something to be said for having a sort of "dated" approach on a forum filled with people who do things like install DOS outliners in 2020. :-D

Hopefully it will be an improvement while remaining in the original spirit. I have a lot of ideas that should be more feasible once the code is modernized. For example, I'd love to be able to move toward a community curated catalog of all the software we discuss so people can browse by platform, features, etc. And then it would be great to also show the relevant forum discussions for each application...

I like the idea of the simplicity of this forum ( maybe as pointed out earlier, it is a "cozy" relief from the complexity of some of the software discussed here ). But I also feel it really needs some updating to the UI, and please, please , at least the ability to edit our posts for mistakes without having to create a new one.
As for the ability to mute certain posters, I find a certain poster rather amusing and entertaining :-) but I do understand how users find it cluttering.