
Ask HN: Do you keep a personal knowledgebase? With What? - c0nfused
Basically, I have this problem where over the course of time I misplace old data and documentation. This then adds hours to the time it takes to pick up on a project that I haven&#x27;t touched in a long time. It seems like  the sort of problem everyone else runs into and that someone has a solid solution that I haven&#x27;t run across yet. Ideally, this would not be limited to software development. After all, it&#x27;s nice to be able to lookup the code to a lock box rather than text someone at 4 am.<p>I have tried a number of things from paper notebooks, text files in folders, trello, google docs, various databases, and various wikis. Most of them have good things going for them but there hasn&#x27;t been a clear winner in the decade or so I have been playing with this.<p>So, I thought I would ask what people use and what you liked about it.
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KhalPanda
I use and love vimwiki[1].

I set my vimwiki directory to be in Dropbox, so it's safe/available on all my
devices.

[1] [https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki](https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki)

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albertlie
I used Slite (YC W18) for keeping my personal knowledge base. The reasons I
use Slite other than Google Keep or Google Drive are because it's simple to
use, it's like Slack so very easy to rearrange and organize like the structure
that I want (this is the most important part of knowledge base IMO), and it
supports markdown better than google docs (most of my knowledge base are
software development related, so I'm a big fan of markdown).

Last but not least, for business presentation, I'll link the Google Slides on
the Slite so every information will be centralized and organized from Slite.

~~~
albertlie
Furthermore, Slite is optimized for sharing as well. So this can be used for
both personal knowledge and knowledge sharing

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acutesoftware
I don't think the main issue is what tool you use is, but rather _where_ your
master copy lives.

I was vigilant using txt/docs in a nice structured folder setup on a local
server, but as I started using Google docs / Evernote / Trello, etc I found
that information was no longer searchable in one place - despite copying and
synching efforts, this is still the case.

So instead of fighting it and wasting a lot of time, I keep the metadata of my
personal knowledge base as the 'master'.

For work projects - Trello using my work login and Outlook For open source -
github is the master knowledge base Docs - currently Google docs, but soon
moving to my own site.

Local NAS is really only for backup of the above stuff now.

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jaytaylor
I've got Evernote hooked up to Evernote Publisher [0], which renders my notes
site [1]. The setup is OK, but I just checked out vimwiki [2] and so far it is
amazing!

[0] [https://github.com/jaytaylor/evernote-
publisher](https://github.com/jaytaylor/evernote-publisher)

[1] [https://jaytaylor.com/notes](https://jaytaylor.com/notes)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16607072](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16607072)

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samlewis
[http://jrnl.sh/](http://jrnl.sh/) is nice

The low amount effort to add an entry allows me to jot down thoughts,
conversations etc easily which makes me actually do it.

Having it save as a plain .txt file is nice for versioning/backup as well.

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nextos
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned org-mode yet.

It's an extremely good tool for this.

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beepbeepbeep1
I agree there is no clear winner.

I mainly use Evernote. I'm trying my best to use org-mode more and sync with
Google Drive as Evernote is subscription based and it comes down to do I want
to keep all my information with a third party who i don't know what their
backup policy is etc. Unfortunately I tend to fall back to Evernote.

The reason I mostly use Evernote and I think key for any alternative is
search, the ability and ease of finding content. Evernote is primarily
searched based and using tags/free text it's fairly powerful. Most stuff goes
in to a singke notebook.

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ismail
My personal knowledge base is mostly in Evernote. Things like
documents(pdf,word) are sitting in Dropbox.

Have not been able to find something that consolidated everything.

I have a system which has been discussed at:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16596569](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16596569)

Currently looking for tips on research paper highlighting, notes and reference
management.

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DamnYuppie
I use Microsoft One Note. It works well for keeping my thoughts together and
keeping notes and links that either support or refute an idea.

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DoreenMichele
Private blogs. Accessible to only me or me and a few other people, depending
on the project/subject.

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NickBusey
Not saying it’s a ‘clear winner’ by any means, still plenty of work to do, but
I use a tool I built for just this purpose.
[https://github.com/NickBusey/BulletNotes](https://github.com/NickBusey/BulletNotes)

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NicoJuicy
[http://HandlR.sapico.me](http://HandlR.sapico.me) , personal mode when logged
in

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dlahoda
my texts in gitlab trying various org modes and tasks and mindmaps + browser
bookmark extension with tags and commenting + copy of medias in seafile or
syncthing

and what ever project enforces, isolating by folders or virtual machines

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mikro2nd
Zim Wiki.

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guilhas
Like it a lot. What is the structure you use?

~~~
mikro2nd
Not sure what you mean by 'structure' tbh. I have numerous wikis ranging from
my generic, catch-all 'Notes' wiki to subject-specific, project-specific and
(more recently) one that takes advantage of the excellent Journalling features
of Zim.

I shy away from much hierarchical organisation (on the assumption that's what
you meant by 'structure') being a long-time user and aficionado of the
Original Wiki (Ward's Wiki). All I want is the simplified markup and (mostly)
the wikilinks-made-by-CamelCase.

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FahadUddin92
I keep a Google Drive for that.

