

Alex Payne: The Case Against Everything Buckets - twampss
http://al3x.net/2009/01/31/against-everything-buckets.html

======
ewiethoff
Overall agree with the article: use individual apps that do well what they're
designed to do, and use the file system to organize your stuff. Unfortunately,
a tremendous number of users cannot make heads or tales out of the file
system.

I believe the chief causes of the confusion are (1) different apps save newly
created/edited files to different places (2) many users are clueless about
navigating the file system within the Save As dialog (3) many users rely on an
app's Recent list (4) many users don't know how to search their own file
systems.

(1) Some apps always want to Save As to the Documents folder. Some always want
to Save As to wherever you finished off your previous Save As. Some always
want to Save As to the folder of the file you most recently opened in that
app. Etc. No one can remember each app's convention.

(2) People don't realize they can navigate within Save As to someplace other
than wherever the app feels like plopping the file by default at that moment.
True even when shown over and over and over how to do this.

(3) Once you move a file, its entry in an app's Recent listing is probably
borked. This sends people who rely on Recent for finding and opening files
into a panic.

(4) They don't know how to click on the desktop and hit cmd-F or to click on
Start->Find. And once they do, the Find window looks nothing like Google or a
web browser. They don't understand what the various search criteria are or how
to enter them. They don't know how to read the results.

~~~
omouse
The file system is a lie. It's all a blob of memory and your data is like
trash, thrown about all over the place. How it appears in your little Windows
Explorer has little to do with how it's stored, so why can't we have more
flexible systems for structuring our data?

As soon as you toss out the idea of separate folders, then your points become
moot and are solved (except for maybe point 4, though I think a new OS would
want to heavily promote that).

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dasil003
I don't use any of the programs he mentioned, but I _do_ use VoodooPad; it has
an "Everything Bucket" feel to it, but I characterize it more as a personal
wiki.

The strawman argument here is that if you just dump all your crap somewhere
you won't be able to make much focused use of it later. Well, no shit. But let
me trot out my own scarecrow:

Every time you add a program your repertoire you're replacing productive time
with administrative time. Of course a great program is worth the extra time
you spend alt-tabbing to it, filling it with data, and then exporting and
munging it to work with the other 100 programs you have.

You know what? After 20 years of being a hard-core computer geek, I've
ultimately found that huge percentage of electronic tools end up being less
useful than simple pen and paper. A personal wiki bridges that gap and allow
me to keep todo lists, code snippets, quotes, ideas, and whatever else I need
to be easily accessible in a single easy-to-browse window. I can put any one-
off content in there I want, and re-organize and hyperlink at will. Alex's
suggestion that a directory structure and a bunch of text files is more useful
is laughable at best. His advice is ill-informed and unimaginative. I'd like
to see what he does with his random bits of information that he need
regularly.

~~~
cdr
I use a wiki as a personal wiki, personally. I've become much more organized
since I started using it - things that were previously on scraps of paper and
miscellaneous text files are now tagged, cross-linked and searchable.

I'm not sure what else you would do.

A few types of structured data, like addresses/other personal info, does go in
a specific program - but mostly because I need to export/input that data
between applications. Generally phone numbers get input in my cell,
exported/integrated to Outlook, and then exported to Skype (and to my wiki).

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dangrover
He mentioned my app, ShoveBox: <http://www.wonderwarp.com/shovebox>

He's right in that these apps are a horrible filesystem replacement. That's
why I cringe when I get emails from users trying to use it as one. I think
there's a lot developers in this category could do to position and market
their apps better.

But what's really happening here is that people are grasping for a better
Finder. Using one of these apps, for some people, makes managing certain types
of data more concrete and understandable. But using it instead of a _folder_ ,
for heaven's sake, is folly.

~~~
dangrover
I just wrote a response: <http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=461711>

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anthonyrubin
When will programmers stop blaming users for the deficiencies of software?

Many users do not understand hierarchical filesystems. Few users care that
"Computers work best with structured data." Why in the world would one argue
against making a computer do work by searching for information?

Use Google to search for your home address. Try a UPS tracking number. Enter
the first few characters of a word and wait a moment. Enter your zipcode
followed by the word weather. These are the types of solutions that we should
be working on.

~~~
jodrellblank
find, spotlight, locate, Start->Search, dir /s, Everything, Google Desktop
Search, Windows Desktop Search.

What makes _you_ think more software, more solutions, will make computers
easier to use?

~~~
anthonyrubin
Nice straw man. I advocate better software, not more software.

find, locate, dir /s and the horrendous file search in Windows XP (I haven't
used Vista) are not solutions for most users. Under what circumstances are
Spotlight, Google Desktop Search and Windows Desktop Search context aware? If
I'm in MS Word will any of these tools show Word documents before other types
of documents? If I'm using a browser will they perform a web search?

~~~
jodrellblank
It wasn't meant as a straw man. Better software is only going to happen in
addition to software that exists already - i.e. more software, leading to (I
suggest) more complexity.

Filesystems work. At least, Windows simple filesystems work, Linux's mess is
less pleasant. People who want to can learn to put files in My Documents and
find them later - it's not massively complex, there's a place for shared
documents, a place for your documents, a place for Programs and a place for
Windows. That's about all you need to care about.

At some point I object to the "Why should people learn anything? It's all the
failings of the computer!!!!" attitude of your comment - there's always a
trade off - any alternative will come with alternative problems. A more
complex system (e.g. context awareness) will have more complex problems with
it.

I often wish for more context awareness in software, but when I stop and try
to visualise it in detail, it seems much less desirable.

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omouse
This is basically like hypertext and Ted Nelson's ideas outlined in Computer
Lib/Dream Machines. He says that our data shouldn't have a strict hierarchy
since that hierarchy is subjective and is typically inflexible. What we should
have instead is data that can be reordered/represented in different ways. The
Everything Bucket apps that Payne is talking about are totally flexible and
you can make up whatever hierarchy you like for your data. This is powerful
and I haven't used any of these tools, but I assume they aren't powerful
enough to allow multiple data representations.

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derefr
At one point, I created an Everything Bucket program of my own. It was called
Nodepad, and was simply a tree on the left and an HTML-rendered-display with
editing controls on the right. However, it didn't keep anything in a
proprietary database; it literally was just a guzzied-up view of the
filesystem.

You opened a "document" by pointing the program at a directory. It then
spidered downward and found all directories whose names ended in .node, and
added them to the tree. When you selected one, what was displayed on the right
was the content of the file "[name].node/[name].txt". (The files themselves
weren't rich-text; each file was actually stored in Markdown, and styled by a
"document.css" file at the root of the tree. This was to discourage playing
with styles while working in favor of getting in, doing your work, and getting
out.) It was autosaved when you stopped editing for a few moments or navigated
away from the node.

It had no other functionality beyond that. For example, to search for
something in the document, you'd just press Ctrl+L to get a "Run command on
current subtree" dialog and type "grep foo". I've since stopped maintaining
the program, and thus it no longer even runs on my computer, but _I still use
the "documents" I created with it_ , simply browsing them in Explorer or in a
shell and editing files the old-fashioned way.

If anyone's interested, I might put out a new version. Apparently I'd have to
change the name if I wanted to find it on Google, though :)

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nazgulnarsil
I want native tagging. When you save a file it should give you the option to
add a searchable tag. This is much easier and more efficient than creating a
folder hierarchy for everything and then constantly navigating through it. And
i want the tags to be independent of the filename.

~~~
ewiethoff
You want Mac OS 9 or earlier. :-) Well, maybe not quite. You could attach text
comments to a file, but I can't remember if the comments were searchable. And
before OS 8 or so, the comments disappeared whenever you decided to "rebuild
the Desktop." You could assign a searchable, color-coded category to a file,
but you were limited to one category per file and something like six or eight
categories altogether. Still, though, the earlier Mac OSs were very handy
(except for the crashing...)

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enra
Well those are virtual notebooks. Notebooks usually don't have a fine
structure, they are not good for particular data but they're enough good for
almost anything that you would like to record. Another point is that those are
usually synched, filesystems usually are not, except Dropbox etc.

Usually I use Evernote to collect some ideas or articles that I want to read
or think again later. I wont use bookmarks(or delicious) since it's hard to
recall from title/tags. I won't print them since I have no printer and don't
want anymore paper. I won't save them to my disk since its not synched across
devices and it's still PITA to open all the files separately. Also I want to
record some automatic metadata and not to input all myself.

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Zak
I don't think the author's claim that the filesystem works is entirely valid.
For a lot of user data, having to pick a single folder in to which a file
should go is a poor fit at best. At worst, the filesystem confuses users to
the point that they actually don't know where things are going.

I haven't used an "everything bucket", but it actually sounds like a very good
idea. I want a program to let me throw whatever is on my mind in to a single
place, attempt to make some sense out of it and let me find it later without
having to do much manual organization.

The article suggests these programs are poorly implemented. Even if that's the
case, Good and Wrong is a start.

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devin
I rarely comment on here, but this article is crap in so many ways. DEVONThink
is not even close to what he makes it out to be. It's a research tool-- an
incredibly valuable one that does /way/ more than he gives credit for. Using
these apps as a filesystem replacement is of course stupid-- that doesn't mean
there aren't a staggering number of reasons why someone might choose to use
one of the apps he mentions.

This is a "look at me" article that doesn't amount to much more than a lot of
whining IMHO. Waste of time.

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tptacek
I agree with al3x, but here's a counterpoint:

[http://www.boingboing.net/2009/01/27/diy-how-to-write-
a-b.ht...](http://www.boingboing.net/2009/01/27/diy-how-to-write-a-b.html)

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dandelany
This is true for now. It becomes interesting when we develop context-dependent
AI that can crawl through the 'everything bucket' and create structured data
from it. An Evernote or Shovebox that could automatically add events to my
calendar, automatically filter and categorize incoming e-mails and bookmarks,
etc. would be a game-changer.

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mattmcknight
I've always wondered why those things were so popular. Desktop search is
enough for me...

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olegp
Agree completely, things should be evolving in the opposite direction:
standardization of data types ("file formats").

~~~
jodrellblank
Disagree somewhat. If every app has to standardize, how does one innovate and
differentiate? How does one improve things and at the same time keep
everything the same?

~~~
olegp
How about evolving schemas? Allow for users/developers to collaborate on
improving the different data types.

Even though a schema may have a fixed set of core attributes, there's no
reason why some app couldn't extend that in any way it sees fit. This way, any
"file" generated with this app would be readable by everybody else while at
the same time include the application specific extensions. Once the extensions
become used by a large enough number of apps, they can be rolled into the
standard.

