Tag: Digital Garden

Ideas for using wiki scripts in websites

  1. Wiki’s are often used to build digital gardens or commonplace book.
  2. Wiki’s can be used as a knowledge base or instruction manual.
  3. You could use a wiki to make a directory that is less hierarchical than a traditional directory.
  4. You could use a wiki to make a local guide or a local tourist guide or travel guide or bike/hike trail guide.
  5. Wiki would work for a local restaurant review site.
  6. Recipe site.
  7. Product review site.
  8. Memoir – so many of our memories are incident by incident.  You could use a wiki as sort of a non-linear memoir.  (A zettelkasten would also work.)

Add other ideas.

 

Stand alone wiki scripts:

I only have a little experience with 2:  Doku wiki and Media Wiki.  For a wiki by an individual I think Doku is a better choice, because Doku uses a flat file database which will be way more durable over the long run.

MediaWiki (used by Wikipedia and Indieweb.org)  can scale very large.  Good for a membership editied wiki,  but most individuals do not need that kinda scale.

Plugins for WordPress.

There are many wiki plugins for *Press.  If you are already using Wordpress/ClassicPress (*Press) then adding a  wiki plugin might be the easiest way to establish a wiki as opposed to installing a stand alone script.

Yada Wiki is the plugin that always catches my eye, although I have no experience with it.

Are Webrings for Digital Gardens?

Keeping your garden on the open web also sets you up to take part in the future of gardening. At the moment our gardens are rather solo affairs. We haven’t figure out how to make them multi-player. But there’s an enthusiastic community of developers and designers trying to fix that. It’s hard to say what kind of libraries, frameworks, and design patterns might emerge out of that effort, but it certainly isn’t going to happen behind a Medium paywall.

from  A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden.

There is currently no way to interconnect digital gardens and other personal knowledge bases, however a stopgap solution might be a webring of the same.  I know this is not quite what the author was eluding to but it triggered the thought.  Also a link is a link.

  1. A webring as a pathway from one garden to another.
  2. Webrings are also a community of a sort.
  3. Webrings are voluntary associations.  The garden owner must want to be associated with the other garden owners.  Must want to have a gate to the garden along the webring path.
  4. Webrings are free, simple and familiar.

Need to Add Note Keeping Schemes to Indieseek.xyz

10 August 2022

I need to add categories for different Note Keeping schemes to Indieseek.xyz directory.   Have to figure out where this fits in taxonomy.

Should include:

Both how to’s, definitions and real life examples.

Digital and analog paper.

Commonplace book, digital garden, zettelkasten, journals, logs, others.  (Name more others. )

Taxonomy could be tricky.  I don’t think I will split digital vs analog into subcats.  Must look at existing taxo.

(Side note: One could create whole section of what I call “stationary p*rn” (ie. writing paper, fountain pens, ink, ball points, journals, note books, blotters, etc. and/or “office p*rn” staplers, paper clip holders, card file cabinets, file folders, filing cabinets, postage stamp roll holders, stamp pads, …)

Adding a Chronological Sort order Journal by Category

I found two WordPress plugins that change the sort order of a category (not the whole installation) to a chronological sort order.  These will also work with ClassicPress.

 

It appears these will both do about the same thing.

What I like:

  1. By enabling chronological post order this emulates a paper journal, diary, book, log book (think ship’s log).  This is the reverse of and distinct from a blog.
  2. You can do just a category not the whole CMS installation.  So a blog or a digital zettelkasten  and a journal can exist on the same ClassicPress or WP instance.
  3. One is not limited to a journal.  One could web publish a book.
  4. The thought of doing something fictional comes to mind.  A. a Lovecraftian type journal wherein the narrator starts investigating strange eldrich events and ends up a gibbering madman, or  B.  some sort of serial hard boiled noir story.

I’m thinking about how this would fit in here on the cyberzettel.  A Zettelkasten is non-linear by design but there is also a use for linear note keeping (ie. reacting to news events of the day,  organizing ones short term plans for the next day or something like that.)

It could turn just a zettelkasten into more of a digital garden model.  It certainly adds options.

There is also something to be said for an end of the day personal log which can act as a daily debriefing session.

Digital Garden

I’m not really sure what a digital garden is.  I think it is a place for notes to grow ideas or projects.

Most that I have seen have been in outline format.  I am terrible at outlines.  Worse on paper, slightly better on digital.  Still bad, me.

However, if you are good at making outlines I can see where this would be very powerful.

Plus it’s a cool name.

Added 10 August 2022:

See comments below for excellent links defining and explaining digital gardens.