2. Your point #5 is enforced explicitly in this system which only allows for two layers of depth: https://johnnydecimal.com/. The goal of that system is different from yours, but maybe an interesting thought experiment to see if you can limit your taxonomy to 10 buckets of 10 sub-buckets.
These were interesting articles to read and think about, thank you for sharing! “A (controlled term) is worth a thousand tags”: truer words were never spoken.
It was very helpful to read more about the PARA system (https://fortelabs.com/blog/para/). I had intuited something along similar lines myself: my "Priorities" tab aligns well with "Projects", and my "Research & Insights" tab aligns with "Resources". My "Priorities" and "Questions & Concepts" tabs, combined with a "Priority" field in my "Research & Insights" tab helps with moving things that might be considered archived to the bottom of my list-- this would happen if I have no priority that includes questions related to the research, or I manually marked the research as less important. I'll detail this more in my next post, which I'll publish when this part of the system is more mature.
What I still struggle with is coming up with how to build "Areas" (longer-term priorities like building a particular skill) into my list of "Priorities". Will continue to think about this!
There is a lot to learn here from library science. I appreciate how the UDC allows for an item to fall under multiple categories. Some of my best sources are interdisciplinary ones which I tag as related to many different questions and concepts so I don't have to agonize about which one folder I put something under.
I thought a bit about how my classification system differs from the UDC and others used by libraries. I think these classification system are subject-matter focused, but mine are geared more towards thinking about root causes for various phenomena that we see.
For instance, "Social media" might be one category in the UDC, but different aspects of social media use would fall under three different parent categories in my system: the underlying technology and ideas the make social media possible, the economic valuation of social media tools/companies, and finally the amount of time people spent collectively interacting with different types of social media. In organizing my research, I try to be as clear as possible about what aspect I'm dealing with (it could be multiple ones, if so I tag it as such). If there are any chains in causality, I have other questions/tags for documenting that as well (e.g. how does new technology, or investment in social media influence our psychology/motivations, and how we spend time).
With that in mind, I think it would be pretty hard to get everything down to two levels like the Johnny Decimal system. A lot of the examples there seemed to be a bit more tactical and related to business management, but keeping my system at 7 levels max as a similar principle seems doable.
Yes, I've come across the first link before in my following of the Progress Studies community-- very relevant!
That second link is brilliant, thanks for sharing! It encompasses my biggest complaints about our current information ecosystem. I am excited to see how these get solved in general over time as I try to solve them for myself with my database.
You must have had all of these links saved in your KMS, no? ;) Curious how you categorized them.
Indeed I've wondered what is my line for stuff I save in my KMS vs stuff I just remember. I suppose closing the tab without saving it, knowing I'll be able to find it again is a good litmus test.
Nice writeup! I didn't even really get the scale of how many questions you've generated until I read this!
Two more resources that came to mind as I read this:
1. This was an interesting approach that pulls from the field of library sciences: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/cataloging-classification-information-science-pkms-and-you/10071. It's interesting to consider that there's a whole field of study for categorization that's never really taught or talked about.
2. Your point #5 is enforced explicitly in this system which only allows for two layers of depth: https://johnnydecimal.com/. The goal of that system is different from yours, but maybe an interesting thought experiment to see if you can limit your taxonomy to 10 buckets of 10 sub-buckets.
These were interesting articles to read and think about, thank you for sharing! “A (controlled term) is worth a thousand tags”: truer words were never spoken.
It was very helpful to read more about the PARA system (https://fortelabs.com/blog/para/). I had intuited something along similar lines myself: my "Priorities" tab aligns well with "Projects", and my "Research & Insights" tab aligns with "Resources". My "Priorities" and "Questions & Concepts" tabs, combined with a "Priority" field in my "Research & Insights" tab helps with moving things that might be considered archived to the bottom of my list-- this would happen if I have no priority that includes questions related to the research, or I manually marked the research as less important. I'll detail this more in my next post, which I'll publish when this part of the system is more mature.
What I still struggle with is coming up with how to build "Areas" (longer-term priorities like building a particular skill) into my list of "Priorities". Will continue to think about this!
There is a lot to learn here from library science. I appreciate how the UDC allows for an item to fall under multiple categories. Some of my best sources are interdisciplinary ones which I tag as related to many different questions and concepts so I don't have to agonize about which one folder I put something under.
I thought a bit about how my classification system differs from the UDC and others used by libraries. I think these classification system are subject-matter focused, but mine are geared more towards thinking about root causes for various phenomena that we see.
For instance, "Social media" might be one category in the UDC, but different aspects of social media use would fall under three different parent categories in my system: the underlying technology and ideas the make social media possible, the economic valuation of social media tools/companies, and finally the amount of time people spent collectively interacting with different types of social media. In organizing my research, I try to be as clear as possible about what aspect I'm dealing with (it could be multiple ones, if so I tag it as such). If there are any chains in causality, I have other questions/tags for documenting that as well (e.g. how does new technology, or investment in social media influence our psychology/motivations, and how we spend time).
With that in mind, I think it would be pretty hard to get everything down to two levels like the Johnny Decimal system. A lot of the examples there seemed to be a bit more tactical and related to business management, but keeping my system at 7 levels max as a similar principle seems doable.
Glad you found them useful! Similar to a science of progress (https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/we-need-new-science-progress/594946/), there's a lot of interesting untapped potential in the science of knowledge management beyond library sciences.
Here's one interesting piece from 2020 thinking about the communal aspect of knowledge management that takes on new meaning with the current trends in AI: https://sariazout.substack.com/p/check-your-pulse-55
Yes, I've come across the first link before in my following of the Progress Studies community-- very relevant!
That second link is brilliant, thanks for sharing! It encompasses my biggest complaints about our current information ecosystem. I am excited to see how these get solved in general over time as I try to solve them for myself with my database.
You must have had all of these links saved in your KMS, no? ;) Curious how you categorized them.
I did have one of these saved, but I was actually able to rely on my good old-fashioned memory to pull these up haha
Impressive!
Indeed I've wondered what is my line for stuff I save in my KMS vs stuff I just remember. I suppose closing the tab without saving it, knowing I'll be able to find it again is a good litmus test.