
Ask HN: How do you share/organize knowledge at work and life? - gavribirnbaum
I find it hard right now to share knowledge with everyone on the team and to turn knowledge into actual learnings.<p>I don&#x27;t know how you guys do it, but I would love to know. We are now 50 people in the company and I don&#x27;t know anymore how to make this scale. What is your process? Do you use any tool for it? How good is it? What needs improving?
======
masnick
I have a personal "knowledge base" that is publicly available at
[https://maxmasnick.com/kb/](https://maxmasnick.com/kb/).

This is partially inspired by Chris Albon's excellent data science technical
notes: [http://chrisalbon.com](http://chrisalbon.com).

I find it very helpful to have this kind of information on a public website.
It's easy to search myself, quick to edit[^1], and helpful for sharing with
others when someone asks me a question.

For notes I don't want to make public, I use OneNote. It's available on every
platform, has a documented file format, and the sync works well. Of course, I
have some more detailed notes on why I prefer this to other options:
[https://maxmasnick.com/kb/note-apps/](https://maxmasnick.com/kb/note-apps/).

[^1]: My whole website is built with [https://gohugo.io](https://gohugo.io). I
use the GitHub Actions beta to automatically update the public site every time
I commit to master. This means I can edit on a computer with a standard text
editor, and also on iOS using
[https://workingcopyapp.com](https://workingcopyapp.com).

~~~
deca6cda37d0
“ I use the GitHub Actions beta to automatically update the public site every
time I commit to master.”

How do you set that up?

~~~
stoolpigeon
If it's not too much to ask, I would add on here that I'd like to see your
Hugo setup. I've been learning it recently but the examples I find are all
rather simple. Just seeing what you've done gives me some ideas of how you did
it, and I'll work on figuring it out - but information on how you organize
things before hugo generates the site would be greatly appreciated.

~~~
masnick
Unfortunately I don't have a good way to reveal the source of my site as there
are some things in that git repo that can't be made public.

I too have struggled to find examples of doing more complex things in Hugo.
It's such a versatile tool that it's probably pretty hard to document
everything in an approachable way.

I may write up how I set up the Hugo portion of the knowledge base as it has
worked quite well. If I do, you can subscribe here to make sure you see it:
[https://masnick.blog/subscribe/](https://masnick.blog/subscribe/)

~~~
stoolpigeon
I understand. I'll subscribe - and just looking over the parts of the site and
going back to the documentation has helped me to wrap my head around a few
things that were eluding me.

Thanks for the response, I appreciate it and I'm really glad you took the time
to post your original answer. It's a real help to me in ways I didn't expect
when I clicked into this thread.

------
afarrell
For any system you build, keep in mind a few general truths:

1) The system isn’t just “the wiki” or “Notion”. The system is composed of
both the tools you’re using AND the habits/expectations of the humans who use
them. So, this is not just a matter of buying a tool. Its a matter of choosing
tools AND designing a process made of humans habits.

2) The system will get messy and unused unless there is regular attention &
time allocated to tidying it.

3) If you want people to do something, recognise and incentivize it. If there
is a person who habitually sends out concise notes after meetings, make sure
that their performance review recognizes that contribution.

4) A habit has three parts: {:situation, :action, :reward}

Example:

Situation: At the end of a retrospective meeting, we have learned of a need
for a runbook on how to handle a type of automated alert.

Action: The team lead updates a runbook and tags a junior engineer to review
it for missing context.

Reward: The team lead feels satisfaction that they’ve set their team up for
future success. They add a bullet point to the notes to use during their next
annual review.

~~~
simongray
> {:situation, :action, :reward}

RuntimeException Map literal must contain an even number of forms
clojure.lang.Util.runtimeException (Util.java:221)

~~~
whalesalad
K this was actually a great joke, for the perfect audience. Sorry for the
haters here’s an upvote.

------
tomashubelbauer
I use Markdown documents in Git repositories whenever I can. Also try to
evangelize for this at work. PRs then include relevant changes to both code
and docs and it's beautiful. For personal project docs I use this exclusively.
At work it depends on the team, some people don't like it, but most often it
is because they don't like keeping docs at all, not because of an alternative
preference. I avoid UI and WYSIWYG based systems like Confluence like plague.
I personally can't stand them and every time I have to use one I do my hardest
to pretend I'm writing Markdown in my head.

For personal agenda I use Apple Notes with basically just a huge list of
things to do and events that are about to happen and I curate that list more
or less non stop during the day. If something comes up and I'm with people and
don't want to be rude and spend too much time on the phone editing things to
be in the right order and have all the relevant info captured with them, I
just plop a line at the top of the note knowing I'll groom it later.

~~~
vendiddy
I do this too. I use Sublime text in distraction free mode with a git plugin
so I can easily commit/push changes.

On my Mac, I can do the 4-finger swipe to check my full-screen notes. Usually
I have a folder structure like notes/2019-10/2019-10-21.txt. If I want to tag
things, I'll just write #idea #work somewhere in the text file.

Then easy to search with Sublime or whatever tool you want. I also like this
approach because it's future-proof. Just a folder full of text files.

Curious how others are handling this same workflow.

~~~
synlatexc
Same here, though mine is one gigantic text file that dates back ~20 years.

Expect to continue updating/referencing it for decades to come, bar some
calamity.

~~~
doomjunky
How? Chronologically or structured by topics? Appending at the top or buttom?
Timestamps? Tags? How do you navigate through the file?

~~~
synlatexc
There are a couple sections, but for the most part it's chronological, with
new entries at the bottom. Started adding dates to new
notes/quotes/observations about 5 years ago.

It's a sprawling mess, so I rely on search to find what I'm after.

I reference it often -- it's like an extension of my brain.

~~~
64738
I do the exact same thing. Just a text file that these days I store in a
Dropbox folder so that no matter what system I'm on I can just "vi
~/Dropbox/notes.txt".

Similarly, several years ago I added a keybind to my .vimrc that, by typing
",a" I'm moved to the bottom of the file and today's date with a separator
line underneath. My leader key is "," and I mnemonically associate "a" with
"append".

The earliest date recorded in it goes back to 2006 and is about 300KB in size.
I still reference and add to it on a regular basis.

------
spencerwf
I would suggest a single source of truth.

In my marriage, it’s my wife’s google calendar.

My personal projects are in a single google doc with tags I search for. I
document my personal projects because sometimes I do stupid stuff and wipe out
my work on accident.

For work, We use confluence as the source. We have daily stand ups that go on
there. For any screenshare 1v1s I create a quick doc to cover what we
discussed. We have a global team and even documenting everything will not
suffice and you will need to meet on a screenshare. Record it for later
reference.

I’ve been leading trainng sessions and they basically are a little technical
stuff but mainly processes and where to go when you run into a problem. The
best way to force people to use your wiki is to take time off or become
unavailable for whatever reason.

~~~
BrissyCoder
> We use confluence as the source. We have daily stand ups that go on there.

You record your stand-ups on Confluence? I think retrospectives should
probably be recorded (on something - Confluence I guess if you're using it)
but stand-ups? Genuinely curious if you think you get any value from this? How
often are they referred back to?

~~~
spencerwf
I’m not sure if our stand ups are similar to other companies but each person
tracks what they are working on in sales force cases or in JIRA.

Our stand ups are for trending issues, global/timezone concerns, and really
important things. They last around 15 mins. The notes we put in confluence are
@mentions and the next steps.

Anything else is tracked in jira/salesforce.

------
TheRealDunkirk
I work in a team closely related to another team, and together we're about 30
people in the midst of THOUSANDS of engineers responsible for shipping
product. We are dying under the burden of tracking and correlating engineering
decisions across product lines and customers through presentations (you can't
have a meeting without PowerPoint!) and spreadsheets -- scattered all over
internal shared drives -- email, and Skype chats (which the company won't
allow history for). Just this week, I'm supposed to start working on a plan to
implement a knowledgebase system to capture all of this information.
Obviously, I'm very interested in the answers here.

The original question was about sharing knowledge amongst a TEAM, but almost
all of the responses are about PERSONAL systems. I know most people watching
this board are small-company startup types (in general), but I'm hoping that
some of the old codgers, like me, working in creaky, legacy firms, have more
to say. If we can't find something off-the-shelf here, I'm going to wind up
writing some kludgy homegrown tool with Elasticsearch, and, frankly, this just
doesn't interest me. I need answers people! The leader for large teams,
according to what I see here, seems to be Confluence. Notion LOOKS cool, but
putting this data in someone else's hosted service is an absolute non-starter
for us.

~~~
benhurmarcel
I'm in a similar company, but the main issue is that almost all modern
solutions store the data in the "cloud", which isn't acceptable in that
situation. Either my company has a contract for that tool (not our level of
decision), or we have to store the data in-house.

Very few tools are made for self-hosting or using mapped shared drives
nowadays.

~~~
miomyosky11
Shameless plug here. Exactly why FileCloud does the job in this condition. You
expose your shared network drive over the network and then via FileCloud it is
just seamless access to those documents etc. no more slow vpn.

We run a server internally and all our documents are stored there.

------
roadbeats
Public and private Git repos of markdown files that sync to Dropbox, so;

\- I can use my IDE in desktop to search / change them.

\- On iOS, iA Writer can access to markdown files

\- I get PRs to my public notebook because it’s on Github:
[https://github.com/azer/notebook](https://github.com/azer/notebook)

\- The format and tooling are unlimited. Images, sound files, jupyter
notebooks, everything fits

\- It’s not binded to a product or protocol. I have freedom to personalize it
and keep it the way I want.

\- It scales beautifully. It’s been 3 years since I started it.

\- The only problem was to have same IDE style for both code and markdown, I
solved it later: [https://kodfabrik.com/journal/ia-writer-mode-for-
emacs/](https://kodfabrik.com/journal/ia-writer-mode-for-emacs/)

I’d recommend it for those looking for alternative options.

~~~
the_arun
Just curious - why do we need to sync to Dropbox if they are already hosted in
a Git repo?

~~~
roadbeats
I want to access them on my iPhone 6. iA Writer is my favorite app and it
supports Dropbox in addition to iCloud.

~~~
jtth
You can directly edit files in a repository using Working Copy. You access it
like any other external file store using iA Writer. You can push changes from
Working Copy.

------
mickael-kerjean
Wikis built with org-mode is my magic bullet with everything under version
control. The major problem was that everyone needed to know both git and Emacs
to contribute but this is not the case since I made a proper web client
[https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash](https://github.com/mickael-
kerjean/filestash)

~~~
bauerd
Is there an org-mode editor besides Emacs that has a lower learning curve?

~~~
kingkongjaffa
what makes you think Emacs has a high learning curve?

~~~
dTal
You can't use Emacs as notepad.exe, and comparing it with vim shows how low
you're setting the bar. Out of the box it doesn't even have standard ctl-zxcv
shortcuts. The keybindings it does have are terrible and give RSI, and
crucially because there's a whole ecosystem of addons that try not to collide,
they can _never be changed_ , which is why CUA mode isn't default.

Some of us just don't want to 'invest' in tools that are profoundly flawed and
will never be fixed, to the extent of causing physical injury.

~~~
throwaway87378
> The keybindings it does have are terrible and give RSI, and crucially
> because there's a whole ecosystem of addons that try not to collide, they
> can never be changed, which is why CUA mode isn't default.

Everything you are claiming is wrong. I came to Emacs from the Apple HIG
shortcut world (which btw, Apple copied from PARC), and I think the keyboard
shortcuts Emacs comes with are better thought out and more ergonomic to use.
That is why they are the default (Emacs users prefer them), instead of cua-
mode, which comes with Emacs and is easily activated.

Emacs key bindings are also far easier to change that in any other
application, because Emacs keymaps are first-class objects with inheritance
and are separate from commands. That is why Emacs can easily support not just
completely different keyboard shortcuts, but completely different input
methods such as modal editing.

------
crispyambulance
All the tool recommendations are nice. I am sure that folks have really
awesome Confluence set-ups.

Whatever you do, however, there is NO replacement for face-to-face discussion
and interaction. There's no replacement for pedagogy that is as old as history
itself: the Socratic method. The best way to learn something is for _both_ the
teacher and the student to ask and answer questions, to solve problems
together.

Yes, it's true that it only scales like 1 -> N, where N is a small number.
BUT, each of those people in that initial small "N" can also rollout knowledge
if they've mastered it, if they have the right attitude about sharing
knowledge, and if you trust them to do that.

------
usrusr
First I distinguish between two kinds of knowledge: one is like encyclopedic
knowledge, just with private topics (what is X, why did Y come into existence,
things you must know when Z), the other overlaps a lot with opinion, "best
practice" and "style guide" would be examples.

Both may end up in the internal wiki, but that's a write-only operation unless
you get people to read. And a wiki is nothing anyone reads front to back,
wikis are entirely pull.

For the encyclopedic kind, I try to sprinkle some links where there is a
chance that people (e.g. me, two months later) actually do an index search.
This is not the wiki, this is email (or some successor thereof).

The opinion type knowledge will be even more lost in the wiki. Outside of
extremely chain-of-command oriented organizations, the only way to spread that
kind of knowledge is by actually convincing others. And a wall of text in an
internal wiki will never do that. But the wiki page can be very useful as a
collection of convincing examples etc to reference in a discussion that
happens elsewhere.

~~~
clevergadget
The tragically correct answer. As I ready this I was hoping you were going to
come up with a magic bullet at the end.

------
Hippocrates
I use the Notes app in iOS/OSX which has been getting insanely powerful in the
last few years. Not only does it sync notes across devices, but indexes them
for spotlight search anywhere. It also transcribes handwritten notes and makes
them searchable, as well as scanned documents like receipts and business
cards. Attaching photos, hand-drawn diagrams, tables, checklists and formatted
text are simple. Notes can be hierarchically organized into a folder structure
(work, blog, 1:1s, ideas etc.) and locked for privacy (1:1s, performance
reviews, holiday gifts etc.). They support sharing and basic collaborative
editing too.

Notes seems so simple on the surface, but every time I use it I am delighted
to find power-user features throughout.

My #1 feature request would be code blocks with syntax highlighting. It
supports monospaced blockes for now. Perhaps even better would be if it would
detect, accept and render markdown formatting.

Until then, a simple trick I use is: copy the RTF text from Notes into a GIST.
It auto-converts to MD.

~~~
nothrabannosir
I used Notes, until a botched sync flushed all my notes on my phone ,
propagated that to iCloud, then to my computer.

If you use notes, make sure that time machine actually backs them up.
Otherwise you’re playing with fire.

------
mxschumacher
Spaced repetition [0] systems like Anki are usually used to study technical
subjects or languages, but one of my "decks" is titled "my truths" and it
contains insights I want to internalize. Repeated exposure is absolutely
central actually making an idea part of yourself and acting accordingly. So
instead of maintaining a large knowledge database, I'd recommend sticking to
solid principles and reviewing them on a regular basis.

Once your team is getting slightly annoyed about how often you repeat
something (solid code review principles or the importance of testing come to
mind), you know you are saying it often enough.

I'm not a religious man, but an observation in an article called "We only
learn if we repeat" in the "the book of life" [1] stuck with me: It's no
coincidence that daily repetition of principles is a core tenant of the big
religions. There's a fundamental insight about human nature in that and we can
apply it to modern technology teams the same way it has been used in
monasteries for centuries.

[0]
[http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html](http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html)

[1] [https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/we-only-
learn-...](https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/we-only-learn-if-we-
repeat/)

~~~
Scarblac
I tried to start with Anki, but didn't really figure out how.

If you have a "truth" you want to remember, do you need to split it up into
some sort of question / answer format to put on the front and back sides of a
card?

I am already scoring well on the "annoying my team with repetitive statements
in discussions" front.

~~~
mxschumacher
yes, formulating a good question that leads you to the insight is important.
Forcing yourself to recall something is an effective way to learn.

------
quadrature
Documentation has a tendency to not keep up with what it is documenting, etsy
has a great blog post about this and their shift in philosophy around
documentation [https://codeascraft.com/2018/10/10/etsys-experiment-with-
imm...](https://codeascraft.com/2018/10/10/etsys-experiment-with-immutable-
documentation/) .

we've adopted something similar at work where we've necessitated that all
support related questions be asked through
[https://www.discourse.org/](https://www.discourse.org/) . This allows the
most timely solutions to surface to the top and if a question hasn't been
asked before it gets thrown into a slack channel where a subject matter expert
can answer it. Making this one change has monumentally reduced the support
burden of our teams.

------
tombell93
I use Notion ([https://notion.so](https://notion.so)) for pretty much
everything (budgeting, tracking my PhD progress, high-level work-related
projects, financial planning, etc). It's so flexible and has all the features
you might reasonably want for managing information etc. It's essentially
Evernote and Trello in one beautiful tool.

At work we use Wikis for most things.

~~~
dorfsmay
Can you make backups of your data that don't rely on notion to exist to be
usable?

~~~
0xCMP
Everything can be exported, but once exported it can not be directly re-
imported.

[https://www.notion.so/Back-up-your-
data-1a8eb5bdfce34d19a636...](https://www.notion.so/Back-up-your-
data-1a8eb5bdfce34d19a6360fd015c0075f)

------
alecigne
I use Emacs Org mode in a git repository hosted on my Raspberry Pi. On my
phone, I use Orgzly to edit the files, along with Termux to manage the git
repo. I also use Termux to launch Emacs from time to time when I need an
advanced operation not yet supported by Orgzly.

I keep sensitive files encrypted using GnuPG and my private key lives on a
Nitrokey Pro (a GnuPG token).

I usually export to various formats with Org mode built-in exporters (mainly
ascii, markdown, html and pdf) but I sometimes use Pandoc, especially to
export to docx.

I have even started blogging with that system. I can edit an Org file on my
phone using Orgzly or Emacs, and then use Termux to automatically 1. push the
change to my Git repo 2. publish the files to html using Emacs in batch mode
3. send the html/css files to my website using a bash script and sftp.

I don't think I will ever look back :)

~~~
jkingsbery
For those who haven't used it, it's hard to describe how amazing Org Mode is.
In the same file format, you can create outlines for documents that collapse
so you can see the big picture; generate PDFs/HTML; you can create a
spreadsheet to understand whether you've done enough of Activity X for the
past year; you can track your meeting notes organized by meeting theme.

------
simplecto
I am starting a new venture and will use BookStackApp
([https://www.bookstackapp.com](https://www.bookstackapp.com)) as my single
source of truth.

It is searchable, offers markdown and WYSIWYG editing, page templates, and is
quite opinionated on how to layout things.

My reasoning for this is to layout basic templates and processes for sales,
support, ops, and office management.

This is also used to lay a foundation for ISO 27001/27002 compliance and
certification along with Eramba ([https://eramba.org](https://eramba.org))

The last part is really niche, but coming from a Healthcare background taught
me hard lessons in NOT HAVING YOUR DOCUMENTATION AND COMPLIANCE SHIT TOGETHER
(TM) when you get vendor or compliance audits.

~~~
eitland
Wow..! BookStackApp looks beautiful to my eyes from what I see on the website!

Also seems like it is real open source : )

(Trying the demo was a bit confusing, but that might be because there is a lot
happening around me at the moment.)

------
LambdaB
Dokuwiki and optionally Mediawiki seem to go a long way in shared
environments. For personal use, [https://zim-wiki.org](https://zim-wiki.org)
is my favorite right now. It uses files as the storage backend and can
therefore be tracked and shared via git. Features are extendable via plug-ins.

As others have mentioned, using one single central tool is crucial, even if it
is only used for references to external tools (e.g. reference to pads). It
should represent the first point of entrance in the search for knowledge in
any team.

This also includes the possibility of migration, export, and self-hosting to
have full access and backups at any time.

~~~
geppetto
Dokuwiki is great. Self-hosted, low requirements (no DB, just php), easy to
maintanin, plain text files so data always accessible. It's a wiki so easy to
edit and publish; readers can register and contribute.

------
glaberficken
I only run documentation for a small team (4 people), so can´t comment on
scaling. But after a lot of failed attempts (word document, text files, wiki)
for now we settled on MS OneNote... yeah I know... as team leader I was
resistant to it. But after noticing my team members had each started their
individual notebooks, I thought - what's the point on trying to force them to
use something I think is better but that is not working for everyone, when
they already found the solution for themselves.

The setup we use is a monolithic MS OneNote notebook stored on MS Sharepoint.

I know this setup is dependent on your shop buying the "expensive MS stuff",
but we already had it anyway...

This setup gives us the following "features":

\- Everyone can edit at the same time

\- Changes are tracked and identifiable by username (you can rewind the file
history)

\- Editing process is very easy and user friendly (you can drag in files,
images etc into your notes, and it just integrates seamlessly. particularly
with the rest of the MS Office suite)

\- OneNote notebook layout is actually pretty good (horizontal tab based main
sections, that can each hold multiple pages of content. these pages can be
visually organized in a hierarchy)

\- It has good search functionality

~~~
jbms
My team's got OneNote notebooks stored on shared network drives, which works
very well with same the benefits you list.

To open the notebook and be able to start typing (or pasting in from email
etc) is a very low barrier of entry, compared to say using a Confluence wiki
page and having to login then click edit.

~~~
benhurmarcel
That's what we have in a lot of teams here, and we have to look for an
alternative now that Microsoft is dropping support for local storage in
Onenote.

The last version to work with local storage (not cloud) is Onenote 2016, which
is supported until 2025.

------
cosmojg
TiddlyWiki: [https://tiddlywiki.com/](https://tiddlywiki.com/)

~~~
fredguth
I used it for a while and really enjoyed. But I wanted to make it work with
github pages and it did not seem easy. Has anyone here managed to do that?

~~~
Howsaboutthat
[https://tiddlywiki.com/#Saving%20to%20a%20Git%20service](https://tiddlywiki.com/#Saving%20to%20a%20Git%20service)

Does this help?

~~~
msaharia
Does tiddlywiki work with Markdown?

~~~
ahnick
Yes. You'll need to install the optional plugin for it. Then you can create
and edit tiddlers in markdown syntax.

------
oedmarap
For teams I've used Raneto[0] in the past.

I use Notable[1] and MkDocs[2] for personal notes and technical documentation
respectively.

All three are markdown powered of course. Raneto and MkDocs can use a Git repo
with your preferred build pipeline and the HTML can be hosted internally or on
Netlify, etc. Works well for teams.

With Notable I use Syncthing to keep notes synced, but that's a personal use
case.

For teams you may also want to give Outline[3] a try. I haven't used it as yet
but it does looks pretty good.

[0] [https://github.com/gilbitron/Raneto](https://github.com/gilbitron/Raneto)

[1] [https://notable.md](https://notable.md)

[2] [https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs](https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs)

[3] [https://github.com/outline/outline](https://github.com/outline/outline)

~~~
greentrust
The Notable + Syncthing setup is intriguing – might have to switch off
Evernote and give that a shot. How do you view/edit your notes on a mobile
device? Thanks for sharing!

------
omarhaneef
Well, here is the issue: “... to turn knowledge into actual learnings.”

As you know, the solution is not just about an electronic system to expose the
data.

The problem is that it is up to your colleagues to read and absorb your
“knowledge” so they become “learnings.”

Now, the solution is also not to force them to do this. There simply isn’t
enough time to absorb the notes of 49 other people every day and still do a
full days work including churning out notes for the others.

This is a bandwidth issue. Does it really make sense for everyone to know what
everyone is doing?

I think they actual solution will be tailor made for you company. Who does
what? Who needs to know what? You have to start with the details.

------
ferros
To bring some structure I think the tool is less important than having
procedures to provide a framework for everything.

I would look at Standard Operating Procedures. They will greatly decrease
stress and give structure to every process that’s important to your business,
and make it easier to scale, onboard people and allow people to fill in for
others.

Also, you iterate on these procedures. As you find improvements you roll them
into the process and that way becomes the new way to do something.

If you just keep documenting and improving the improvements will be noticeable
quickly.

------
graycat
Personal organization:

(1) Use the Windows file system to create a directory ("folder") tree that is
often a _taxonomic hierarchy_. Have some good little command line _tree
walking_ commands.

(2) Do a lot with just text in simple text files. Generally prefer just simple
text. Manage these files with a really good text editor. Have a lot of macros
for the editor. E.g., start each entry in a file with a time, date, day of
week stamp from a macro -- good to have to document the entry even if don't
have much more.

(3) In each directory, have a text file that describes the other files or
directories in that directory.

(4) Have a file, I call FACTS, just a text file, that has little _facts_ :
Each entry starts with a delimiter line, then a time-date line, then a line of
keywords, and then the entry. The entries have user IDs, passwords, credit
card info, e-mail addresses, USPS addresses, phone numbers, URLs of
interesting Web locations, names of people and/or notes on them, etc. really
just lots of short _facts_. Write a little editor macro to do search keywords.

E.g., since this thread likely has better ideas than I have, I put the URL of
this thread in FACTS!

Big point: A single file of a few million characters searches essentially
instantly and can hold lots of facts per day for years!

(5) For more, that is, for more serious information, knowledge, etc., write
notes, even nice papers in D. Knuth's TeX and index them in FACTS, describe
them in the documentation file of directory of the paper, etc.

For what to share with others, I'd suggest relatively well written notes or
papers. For more, have a directory, make a ZIP file of the whole directory,
and share that. For more, maybe use GITHUB or some such.

~~~
pigeon888
Awesome, thanks

------
geocar
Create a knowledge-team whose sole job is to take information from all the
other teams, digest it, and make it available to the rest of the firm. Call it
"corporate communications" or "internal marketing" or whatever floats your
boat. If you can't get a proper department, at a minimum you can get a on-
staff librarian who is a good technical writer who you can pass around the
firm (as long as they have the ear of the CEO/COO).

~~~
koonsolo
In a programmer environment, this is impossible. A programmer will always need
to document his own things for a simple reason: (s)he is the only one who
really knows. Putting people in the middle of that who can barely understand
all the details, seems like a lot of overhead for a worse deliverable.

~~~
geocar
A programmer who writes their own documentation is like a barber cutting their
own hair: Economical perhaps, but worse for anyone who has to look at the
result.

And yes, if your audience is programmers, then ideally you can hire technical
writers who can program, and who can speak to programmers, but failing that,
technical writers who can get proofread by a programmer can also work.

Having a single consistent voice is what matters, and that comes from giving a
person the responsibility to be that voice.

~~~
koonsolo
A programmer writing documentation is far from economical, since most of the
time their time is worth more than technical writers.

It depends on the type of documentation of course, but if you work in a 50
person team and you want to document internal architecture or code structure,
you better let the programmer that knows about the stuff write it.

First getting that technical writer up to speed about how everything is
structured, the little implications etc, is pretty insane. It's like that
phone game where you tell one person something, and then that one tells the
next.

~~~
geocar
> A programmer writing documentation is far from economical...

And then you go on to explain a way that it is more economical; Time is also
an important economic consideration.

> First getting that technical writer up to speed about how everything is
> structured, the little implications etc, is pretty insane. It's like that
> phone game where you tell one person something, and then that one tells the
> next.

No. That's what happens when you have a non-technical writer do technical
writing. I wouldn't have felt like I have to say this but just because someone
has "technical writer" in their job title doesn't mean they can do that job.

~~~
koonsolo
Yes, but they didn't do that job.

If my colleague programmer works a week on refactoring some code, I honestly
have no clue what was changed. There is only 1 person who actually knows what
and why.

~~~
geocar
I don't believe you can have 50 people producing knowledge and checking in
code that nobody ever looks at or reviews, writing documentation that all 50
are expected to know, and have even a good portion of that 50 people
understand it well.

I also think that if you have developers working for a week without anyone who
knows what they're doing you have a management problem.

We might be talking past each other, and I might not understand exactly what
you're saying.

------
thegranderson
Recently came across this interesting approach for organizing knowledge across
all domains (life and work):

[https://praxis.fortelabs.co/the-p-a-r-a-method-a-
universal-s...](https://praxis.fortelabs.co/the-p-a-r-a-method-a-universal-
system-for-organizing-digital-information-75a9da8bfb37/)

I haven't fully implemented it yet, but the general concept is:

Projects: a series of tasks linked to a goal, with a deadline

Areas: a sphere of activity with a standard to be maintained over time

Resources: a topic or theme of ongoing interest

Archives: inactive items from the other three categories

------
cborenstein
Disclosure: I am a founder at bytebase.io, currently in closed beta.

My former team used Confluence and Google Docs for knowledge sharing and found
that it worked great for planning projects, but fell short for things that
change quickly or are relevant for only a short period of time - code
commands, debugging tips, meeting takeaways.

We relied on slack and personal notes for these tidbits which resulted in the
information being difficult to find.

This experience inspired us to start Bytebase, the byte-size knowledge base
for engineering teams.

Everything in Bytebase is a "byte" \- a short chunk of information - not a
document, and bytes can be composed of other bytes.

Bytebase makes it easy to capture and share bytes using a shortcut-heavy UX
that feels familiar to engineers.

Would love any feedback or ideas. Email me (cara@bytebase.io) to get access to
the closed beta with HN in the subject line.

~~~
codezero
I'm really waiting for a service like yours to "make it" \- We've tried things
like Guru, which I think is similar in theme (small, time sensitive bits that
need to be updated/maintained), but sharing the maintenance across the company
meant nobody prioritized it.

Bytebase looks super straight forward and minimalist, I wish you the best of
luck in improving this space!

------
bloopernova
* I use a Leuchtturm1917 A4 square-dotted hardcover notebook for immediate notes.

* Longer-term items go into Org-Mode in Spacemacs.

* On-the-go to-do items go into Org-Mode as well, via the excellent Android app "Orgzly". These are shared via Dropbox with the Spacemacs instance.

* Habits are also in Org-Mode, with the org-agenda habits view showing me how I'm doing on that. A habit being a repeated task, something you want to do semi-regularly like "remember to take preventative inhaler" or "do yoga at lunchtime when working from home". This is a good overview of org-agenda + habits view: [https://blog.aaronbieber.com/2016/09/24/an-agenda-for-life-w...](https://blog.aaronbieber.com/2016/09/24/an-agenda-for-life-with-org-mode.html)

* I used to also save technical discoveries as a long list on my personal DokuWiki page in our work instance. It would get written as "Short Headline", then description, then code examples. Things like Title: "YUM wildcards", Description: "Use “yum list”", Example: "[root@wiki01 ~]# yum list "php*fpm"". I intend to get back to that by using the note taking org-mode capability in Spacemacs and scripting a dump of those into a personal wiki "somewhere".

------
mch82
Mediawiki works quite well. Most people use Wikipedia, so are able to quickly
learn & use Mediawiki. Wikimedia Foundation has a number of initiatives to
increase the diversity of Wikipedia contributors, so that translates into
features non-technical people in your org will appreciate.

Microsoft was using Mediawiki for external-facing developer docs (at least on
the HoloLens site), but after the GitHub acquisition has switched to a
workflow that uses VS Code as a Markdown editor & publishes to GitHub pages.
That kind of workflow can be okay if all the people in your company are highly
technical.

As your company grows you may get value out of internal conferences or mini
TED style talks.

Video & screen recording can really help too.

~~~
mch82
For personal notes, I’ve fallen back to plain text files with Markdown
formatting. They’re relatively easy to search & avoid vendor lock-in so I can
retain access to my writing. I try to include a common word in the title of
related text files to aid finding them. But usually I can just type a phrase
into Mac or Windows operating system search and find the note I’m looking for.
I’m still deciding if it’s worth organizing my notes into folders.

Previously, I wrote papers and notes in a variety of word processors and page
layout tools (Claris Works, Word, Apple Works, Pages, InDesign). Over time I’d
miss an upgrade cycle, switch OS, or couldn’t justify the cost of an upgrade
and lost access to many of those files. So far text files have proven to be
quite portable across editor apps & I’ve also found writing in plain text
helps me focus my thinking.

------
adds68
I use [https://standardnotes.org/](https://standardnotes.org/), which allows
me to tag my notes and search, it also syncs to my mobile.

There are some great "organizational" options in this thread though!

~~~
tannercollin
I wrote standardnotes-fs, if you'd like to mount your notes as a file system:

[https://github.com/tannercollin/standardnotes-
fs](https://github.com/tannercollin/standardnotes-fs)

------
uallo
I rely heavily on [https://workflowy.com/](https://workflowy.com/)

Here is a quick interactive demo: [https://workflowy.com/list-
maker/](https://workflowy.com/list-maker/)

But I'm not sure how well that works with 50 people. You should probably
mention what kind of knowledge you want to share and what features you might
need.

~~~
travisluis
Second workflowy. There are other zoomable nested lists (e.g., dynalist), but
they're too slow. Workflowy forces minimalism, which ensures your data is
portable and that the handling of it is fast.

Adding colored tags[2] and the Workflowy Code Formatter extension[1] makes it
really great.

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/workflowy-code-
for...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/workflowy-code-
formatter/kglihipcanlbglgikjghocmbbbbkfemn)

[2] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/painter-for-
workfl...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/painter-for-
workflowycom/boeplfofdabogkgimajcpadbnfcmkmek)

~~~
s_r_n
I was a heavy Workflowy user for my own personal notes for a few years, and
then I switched to Dynalist after a colleague recommended it to me. It can do
a lot of things that Workflowy can't (or at least it could when I switched a
couple years ago) such as format LaTex code. I rely heavily on this software
for organizing my thoughts in both work and my personal life, and I use it
daily.

I've tried using these tools in a work environment but my colleagues have
never really loved it, so it's more of a personal tool. We just use Google
Docs in my current work environment.

------
aizatto
I built Logbook for my own personal note taking.

Two key features for me:

1\. Tagging notes works better for me than a directory structure

2\. "Feed" style of notes allows me to go search more notes.

[https://build.my/logbook](https://build.my/logbook)

For sharing with public I use GitBook
[https://www.aizatto.com](https://www.aizatto.com) thought here are some short
comings [https://www.aizatto.com/why-gitbook](https://www.aizatto.com/why-
gitbook) . I personally like how it can output to Markdown, so that means I
can have a copy of it anywhere

------
YohAsakura
What a cool thread, I mean it.

I don't know how to organize wiki-like things for teams, but here are my two
cents for the topic of personal knowledge bases.

First of all, regardless of software, I prefer less structured and less
constrained approaches so that it doesn’t take too much time and effort to add
things to my knowledge base. I try to minimize the total number of entities
(lists, files, notes) and to avoid folders at all. Usually I achieve this by
using tags.

Secondly, I am still in a search of a perfect approach, but here is one thing
where I succeeded to some extent, namely collections of homogeneous items. I
use AirTable for that, but one can use Notion. For example, here is a list of
software, I started it several months ago:
[https://airtable.com/shr8Wd96FurJmiTLs/tbl0n17xFuXrs0kMS?blo...](https://airtable.com/shr8Wd96FurJmiTLs/tbl0n17xFuXrs0kMS?blocks=hide)
I have a similar list for scientific papers that I read. And I started two
more lists for other things. It is important that 1) the number of lists is
low (I have 4 now) 2) the lists have simple structure 3) I can always download
them as csv and do whatever I want.

As for the rest, I use markdown notes (I edit them with
[https://typora.io](https://typora.io)) stored in a dropbox-like cloud for
ideas-like stuff. I use Google Keep for super-simple lists and I also have
there a temporary note that serves as a buffer for sudden thoughts and ideas,
from where I move them later to more appropriate place. I use
[https://todoist.com](https://todoist.com) for my tasks, they are not
organized very well (because no tags in the free plan), but the app is really
nice and the number of tasks is not that great, so for now this works fine :)

------
hliyan
Over the years, I've tried everything from MediaWiki, Evernote, OneNote,
Confluence to Google Docs. Each seems awesome when you start out, but after a
while, the novelty wears off and out-of-date crud starts accumulating.

The only thing that has remained constant for me are _text files_. I use two
forms: if it's related to a component I'm developing, I tend to place it in
the repository itself, in README.md, or docs/ _.md. Other stuff I keep in text
(_.md) files in a Dropbox.

Only those things that don't fit well into the above two formats go into
Confluence.

------
mgreenleaf
I second the needing a single, searchable source of truth. One of the main
needs is for it to be maintained and updated. Having it all in one place helps
with that and reduces the cognitive load of making the decision of where to
update.

We use fossil; a bit minimalistic, but you get a wiki + code repository + tech
notes + issue tracking all in one place and auto-updated with the code, and
you can run it as a server with a web interface for those who don't need
permissions to clone the repo.

------
Dowwie
Does anyone annotate code for knowledge management? I've reached a point where
I've worked across so many projects and languages that when I return to code
after some time, I can longer completely remember where I used certain
patterns or other that I want to reuse elsewhere. Grep can only help so much
with code alone. Documentation doesn't cover this category, either. So, I've
started experimenting with ways of doing so.

I am experimenting with a custom markup that exists in code comments before,
within, and following a code block that is the subject of discussion. I reuse
markup attribute values to standardize categories.

Then, an app scans source for annotations and indexes them. I can then fuzzy
search against the index using a range of words and get references.

If anyone likes this idea and would like to collaborate with it, and have the
chops for doing so, contact me..

~~~
mxuribe
I didn't used to when i was first coding as a youngblood. But I'm now
beginning to annotate code more for knowledge management. I'm finding that now
that i'm getting back to coding on a (tiny, little more) frequent basis, my
memory is suited to recent stuff...and to offload the "why" i coded something
a certain way is helpful.

------
zerm778
[https://www.notion.so](https://www.notion.so)

~~~
dewey
Putting all your company's data in a random startups hosted service is
something not everyone can and should do though. Even if it looks really nice.

~~~
jesterson
As much as I love Notion, things that you've mention really holding from
moving sensitive data into Notion. Wish they had more solid approach to
security.

Not sure if this is still relevant, but at some moment they acknowledged their
stuff access to client's data. This is huge no-no for any privacy conscious
person.

Other that that it's a great tool for organising personal information for me.

~~~
AndrasL
Don't most companies that have access to your data have the ability to screen
it (at least theoretically, if not practically.) E.g., Google for Gmail,
Microsoft for Outlook etc.

------
motohagiography
I use ontologies like
[https://webprotege.stanford.edu](https://webprotege.stanford.edu)

Fewer descriptive words, more structure.

A company ontology has three top level categories: Parties(internal,
external), Metrics(Platform, SaaS), and CompanyStructure which has links to
things like cap table, incorporation artifacts, org chart, accounts, etc.

The metrics piece is useful because it provides north star metrics for a SaaS
business, and then performance ones for the Platform itself. All features roll
up into these, and then their git codebases are linked from there.

If your features don't drive your metrics, you're just in the custom dev
business.

I use it personally, but it's a bit dominating to have an umbrella framework
that encapsulates what people think is their special contribution.

------
gorkemcetin
Documenting / sharing what you collect at work and at life are two different
things. Usually platforms used at work requires enterprise sharing, security
and authentication capabilities whereas the ones you use at home don't need to
have those.

At work:

* Confluence ([http://confluence.atlassian.com](http://confluence.atlassian.com))

* Balsa ([https://getbalsa.com](https://getbalsa.com)) - this one is open source, can be deployed on premises and has several security features - think of it like Evernote replacement but you keep your company files with you.

For personal use:

* Sublime text (when I don't need any sharing among devices)

* Notes (if I need to exchange data between my iphone and my laptop)

------
jitl
Notion: [https://notion.so](https://notion.so)

[edit: I work at Notion. I’ve added some more color about that to the top
here. This isn’t marketing spam I’m commenting from bed on my phone - sorry
that it came off slimy]

Notion is a malleable collaborative wiki that also has relational databases.

We build Notion, so it figures that Notion is our single source of truth. I
think the way we use Notion internally works pretty well - with better results
than the smattering of tools I’ve used at other companies - but we’re a
smaller team...

Notion makes a good wiki because adding, editing, and organizing information
has such low activation energy. Each part of the org (Eng, Community,
Marketing, People, ...) has a tree of pages with process, information, etc.

We have a few big centralized databases that everyone uses:

\- Tasks. Lets us see what anyone is doing, assign tickets, track progress.

\- Documents. This one has a weird name. All teams put meeting notes,
research, proposed designs, RFCs, specs in this database. The common thread
here is that documents are artifacts of their time: they’re authored, reviewed
and commented on by the team, iterated on, then ratified or archived. We
rarely change them afterwards because they store historical context on
decisions. If an RFC changes a process, or a design gets implemented, the
affected team(s) might update their wikis.

\- Goals. Stores objectives, product use-cases, and large projects. We relate
Tasks and Documents with the Goals they support.

Centralizing these databases fosters cross-team visibility and assists with
collaboration, eg seeing Eng and Marketing tasks related to an upcoming
launch, plus the designs and research.

Shortcomings:

\- Search. At the ~50 person size it isn’t a desperate problem but it does
hurt.

\- Integration with email and calendar. There’s no way to sync Notion to Gcal
or react to incoming emails.

\- Integration with Github: none.

\- Mobile performance could be better.

[Disclaimer: I work at Notion.]

~~~
OJFord
IMO you should disclose (and it is a disclosure, not a disclaimer) your
employer at the top, because it makes the rest of your comment something
nearer to marketing copy than user review.

~~~
Jedi72
EDIT: Check OPs history, he asked this exact same question 46 days ago!

Ive never heard of this startup before, now they're all over this thread. Do
you reckon they made this whole thread for marketing purposes? OP is a pretty
anonymous user.

I already dislike them now & hopefully never have to use them. Someone else
posted Tiddlywiki which is an amazing open-source program, suggest everyone at
least check it out. It changed my life. I obviously have no stake in it, so
why doubt me? No disclaimer necessary.

~~~
OJFord
I don't think so, in that submission (which got much less attention) the only
mention of Notion is OP doubting that it's more than hip design.

------
AndyPa32
Privately it's org-mode all the way.

At work it's a mixture of mostly Confluence and Markdown README files.

~~~
tikkabhuna
We're the same.

Confluence's inline and bottom-of-the-page comments are excellent. You can
have proper chained discussions.

Blog posts have been amazing for us to share small "experiences" like how
somebody setup their environment (as opposed to more standard env setup
documentation). These tend to be more informal.

Markdown files in repositories have been alright, definitely good for readmes.
However, they suffer because our tooling (Gitlab) does not support comments on
the files.

~~~
GordonS
I use Confluence at work, and it's quite good - biggest issue for me is the
lack of markdown support. I'd _really_ like to be able to author Confluence
pages using markdown.

~~~
treelovinhippie
They've added markdown support in the new editor. Auto-converts as you type.

------
alexcnwy
I use an outliner called Dynalist.

It’s an alternative to Workflowy. Workflowy development stalled a while ago so
I switched but it seems to be active again so I might switch back.

An infinitely zoomable hierarchy works really well for my OCD :)

~~~
jmiskovic
Another alternative is TreeSheets
([http://strlen.com/treesheets/](http://strlen.com/treesheets/)) which is
desktop only but very fast and nice implementation of structured note taking
tool. It's very well suited as replacement for mind maps, categorization of
items and mapping hierarchical structures. I prefer it to any online solution
because of speed and data ownership.

------
whalesalad
I use a combination of Things.app, Notion, and Trello.

Fortunately most of my client work involves the use of Trello. Either I come
onboard and institute a board/process that they can jive with or they have an
existing board/process. That has been great. Trello is only as good as the
person managing it, that’s important and methinks why a lot of people dislike
it. I do a good job of managing Trello to fit the general framework of working
and thinking that exists for each project or client.

For client projects Trello is the boss hog. Everything is stored there. Things
will get broken out into sub-boards when necessary.

For personal stuff, it’s a combo. I use Trello to track things that have
graduated from the research/idea phase into the action phase.

The research and idea phase I speak of occurs in Notion or more accurately on
paper documents (no. 2, 2B Soft pencil!) scattered around my physical desk
that eventually work their way into Notion. There, I enrich things with
outlines and maybe full blown documents. For instance I used Notion to do a
big documentation project for a client, exported as markdown, cleaned it up,
and then forklifted it into their Github project wiki.

I also use Notion for all sorts of personal stuff. My homelab for instance is
tracked there, with tables describing IPs/hostnames or hardware in the rack
etc. The hierarchical nature makes it great to start low fidelity and go high
fidelity.

I’ve got random article ideas there, some in outline and others in more
detail.

Will come back and update this post with more detail shortly. Doing this via
mobile and gotta jet.

I will echo afarrell though and posit that the tools are less important than
the process. Determine the process and the outcomes before you choose your
tool!

------
gwbas1c
I hold office hours: Two meetings a week with (usually) no agenda, and anyone
can call in and ask anything.

Sometimes someone will email me the day before and suggest an agenda.

Other times, when there are newcomers, I'll set an agenda for a few meetings.
Usually I discuss design patterns that we use, libraries that we use, ect.

------
TheGrumpyBrit
A combination of:

\- A shared Outlook.com calendar where we (well, mostly my wife) puts social
events and commitments \- Hugo/git as a general KB for work related stuff \-
Microsoft Teams as a day-to-day journal and tracking of personal projects. \-
Standard Notes / VS Code as a text-only scratchpad.

------
mattlutze
The best way to share knowledge at work and in life is regular conversation
with the people on the team. No matter the method for capturing knowledge, a
lot of folks on the team aren't going to find things in it. Many experienced
people on the team having wide-reaching networks throughout the team will be
better surfacing of various things they've all learned, as well as improve
overall design and architecture of what you're working on, and improve the
education and quality of work for the rest of the team. This can be further
augmented with formal design and implementation meetings, where problems and
choices are discussed with revolving groups of people.

~~~
sjogress
I think you are right in most cases, but I find wikis to be excellent for how-
to/recipe kind of information.

These can be either technical (e.g how to bootstrap a new repository or how to
connect to this database), organisatorial (e.g how to apply for vacation or
how to apply for conference funds) or simply office related (e.g how to print
something, how to refill coffee-beans on the coffee-machine).

------
avip
I put everything in trello. It’s terrible as trello’s search sucks. But I
still do it.

~~~
john2smith
I was searching for such tools and founded a useful one Restya. Restya is a
productivity and management tool specifically built around a Kanban-style
workflow. Great for personal use (FREE) and scales easily to business and team
use. We use it daily for managing our project workflow. I work closely with
the developers, so feedback is always great. Restya is an excellent free
Trello alternative
[https://restya.com/board/comparison](https://restya.com/board/comparison)

------
davidscolgan
Currently I use Dynalist.io, which is like Workflowy but adds the concept of
documents and has a ctrl-P like fuzzy finder. My notes are a complete mess and
I have not found a way to organize them into anything useful. Right now my
brain dumps are basically write only. Solving this is an active interest of
mine, since I want to publish my thoughts at some point.

My coach Malcolm Ocean has been speaking highly of
[https://roamresearch.com](https://roamresearch.com), which looks like a
promising way to keep track of research-style notes.

------
nilsandrey
You must try what's better for your team. Decide in subteams and share with
the others the experience on workshops, then evaluate the pros and cons to
decide and don't be afraid of try and change. The right set of tools also
depends on the type of work you do.

Blogs, wikis and QA sites (also microblogging, shared conversations) witch a
search center for all are classic instruments for implementing solutions that
start by the organization (with agreement) of the "way of doing" by the teams
and management. UPDATE: Like others say no replacement but a complement of
teams and people face to face interactions, that can be perfectly established
with some sort of SCRUM scalation.

On dev and DevOps environments, I prefer "doc as code" solutions (Github
based); with one type of Github project as Hub for a collection of
subprojects, using the main repo as documentation for guide, FAQ, status and
blog post host (markdown or variants) as well as the Project Management and
Issues management features as coordination tools.

Please elaborate on the kind of work and teams, the real need for integration
with existent information management systems and the community will come with
better suggestions. There is a lot of tools available, including more general
approaches like a CMS portal with Sharepoint or O365 or Wordpress with
plugins, some more direct to the KNB question only like QA for teams
(StackOverflow), others tasks focused like Trello, etc.

------
sareiodata
For our support team of 5 we just started using a custom text expansion tool I
built in Electron. The snippets (canned messages) are stored in a WordPress
site (we already have the main website / docs in wp so it was a good fit) and
we all contribute to them.

[https://github.com/sareiodata/kbexpander](https://github.com/sareiodata/kbexpander)
[https://github.com/sareiodata/kbexpander-
snippets](https://github.com/sareiodata/kbexpander-snippets)

The tool is mapped to a keyboard shortcut (the OS manages this) and searches
the snippet title and content. So you can easily filter down stuff.

The WP plugin also has reports, like most used snippets (every-time you paste
a snippet, we track that) per user / date / category. This way we'll try to
see in the future if we can improve a particular part of our product, improve
inline docs so we stop getting those questions. I'm not sure if this will
amount to anything, but it's something we're experimenting with.

Other tools exist, but I didn't find anything with good enough search + a way
to have a common repo for snippets + usage reports, thus the Electron
monstrosity and WP companion plugin.

This is how it looks:
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EG_Ejy9X0AAnnMV?format=jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EG_Ejy9X0AAnnMV?format=jpg)

------
giancarlostoro
At work we have Confluence and MoinMoin as internal documentation wikis, so
sometimes I use MoinMoin for stuff not in Confluence I put it under my own
MoinMoin homepage. If a project has a space on Confluence I go crazy on it. At
home I mostly write things down or use the QuickNotes app on my LG G7.

I am debating writing my own little utility or setting one up on one of my
Raspberry Pis at home. So I can have some sort of small wiki for internal use
at home.

------
edickstein
Knowledge Management is clearly a ubiquitous and important business problem.
I've struggled with Knowledge Management in previous roles and deployed a tool
called Guru at two different companies. My teams found Guru significantly
better than a Wiki because Guru distributes the maintenance load across a team
of Authors (experts) and sets verification intervals (ie 1 week, 1 month, 1
year, etc) so that the Author is nudged to re-verify or update the info after
the horizon expires. We found such success with the tool, and I enjoyed
working with the Guru team on deployment so much, that (full disclosure!!) I
now work on Guru's Customer Success team.

There was mention in the thread below about no tool being able to replace
personal interaction. While I agree with that, Guru is the next best thing
I've found so far, especially when teams grow to the point that the "Expert"
is getting shoulder-tapped too often to focus on their actual job. Tons of
other good ideas below that I don't have time to consume.

Check out getguru.com if curious!

------
namuol
Video chat sessions that are recorded and shared with everyone. This includes
things like pair programming, but also just normal conversations on topics
that are too green for any kind of formal documentation.

Then as you build consensus it makes sense to start putting things in writing
to reference in future discussions.

When putting things in writing, put as much of this in your code as possible,
and don't be afraid to repeat yourself in many places.

Be deliberate about how you name things. You should choose names that align
with names used across disciplines/teams in verbal communication.

Cross reference things by these identifiers, even if you're not using any
formal documentation generator.

Rely on new employees to write high level documentation, with seniors around
to answer their questions. A new hire will have the ideal perspective, and
will become an expert in the process. Pay them accordingly ;)

Don't worry about docs getting out of date. Again, rely on new hires to find
issues with docs.

Be relentless about reducing "API surface area" of your subsystems.

------
corprew
Personally, I'm on a tight Things.app <-> Bear.app loop; professionally, it
varies. For keeping professional stuff up to speed I'm on a Things.app
ingestion -> Asana loop that throws off artifacts to a google drive and
various git repository markdown files, which might be writing new documents or
keeping existing documents up to date.

------
mkr-hn
I recently switched to Notion from Evernote. Here's a referral link:
[https://www.notion.so/?r=a48a98c66d914566827b061a3e7efd91](https://www.notion.so/?r=a48a98c66d914566827b061a3e7efd91)

It took about a week to get used to the way organization works, but the
ability to nest things under things and have them more or less self-index is
handy. If I move two things under the same item, the item will show a list of
the two things in a new Page type item. You can turn that new page into a
wiki, style it, add notes, etc.

If you've ever used Scrivener, Notion is similar to the way it lets you
organize things in a freeform way. My only gripe is that export dumps
everything into files in one folder. They need to copy the way Dropbox Paper
(or Scrivener) exports that retains the structure in folders. At least they
support Markdown exports. That's more useful than the full HTML pages most
note apps export.

------
jookyboi
Founder of [https://www.cacher.io](https://www.cacher.io) here.

Cacher was built for the express purpose of team knowledge sharing via code
snippets and Markdown docs. It has also been successfully scaled out to teams
of dozens, with a few customers rolling out to hundreds of members.

We believe successful knowledge sharing comes down to several parts:

1) Organization via categorization. While retrieving knowledge, labels/tags
are an important heuristic shortcut. We often have trouble remembering but
details but can usually recall the purpose of the piece of knowledge.

2) Integration with existing tools. People hate changing their workflows.
We've found that engineers who are used to coding in VSCode or IntelliJ would
rather not leave their editor to retrieve snippets. The context switching is
just too expensive. Cacher is integrated with major editors/IDEs for this
reason.

3) The ability to keep other team members updated on progress and changes. A
proper knowledge system uses notifications judiciously to keep everyone on the
same page. Cacher does this via customizable desktop/email/Slack
notifications.

4) A professional understanding of the knowledge workflow. It is important,
regardless of which tool you adopt, to come to a consensus on how the
knowledge will be used. Marketing and e-commerce teams use us to store
HTML/CSS with the intent of creating a large library of components and
patterns. Technical support teams create snippets for remembering how to
update a user's billing account. Before settling on a tool, consider what kind
of knowledge is important day-to-day and agree as a group on how you'd like to
retrieve it.

I hope that helps! If you're team is looking to try it out and would like
thoughts on how to set up an adoptable workflow, feel free to ping me:
rui[at]cacher.io

------
zzaner
We used to use Confluence but it always felt too bloated and cluttered. It was
a pain to get people to contribute and even harder to find stuff because of
how slow and broken the search was.

We have since switched to Nuclino
([https://www.nuclino.com/](https://www.nuclino.com/)) and are pretty happy so
far. Refreshingly simple, lightweight, and focused on getting the essential
features right. We are now moving away from Google Docs as well and trying to
consolidate all knowledge in Nuclino. It's almost perfect for our needs, only
a few nice-to-have integrations are missing (and will hopefully be added
soon).

Finding the right tool is only half the battle though, getting people to
actually use it and keep the content up-to-date is usually the real challenge.
Switching to a more user-friendly tool certainly helps, but it isn't enough to
create a culture of documentation.

------
pierrepinard_2
Hi,

To organize and share our knowledge at work, we use the project management
tool we developed: [https://en.beesbusy.com](https://en.beesbusy.com)

We create projects and tasks for specific topics and use comments for updates.
And for more complete information, we can add a link to shared documents or an
attachment. For instance, we created processes templates that can be updated
and duplicated.

I find it very useful because knowledge is then organized in a workflow
perspective: for instance, our product roadmap information is updated by
everyone on a daily basis.

Since Beesbusy can be used for any type of project and has a mobile app, I
also use it to organize my personal life. I share projects with my wife
(shopping list, travel plans and so on) and I have everything in one place.

I would also recommend using a wiki for in-depth information. We use the
Gitlab wiki for its simplicity, and we add links to its pages from our
Beesbusy tasks.

------
rcarmo
My website started out as a personal Wiki, and it still works like that under
the covers -
[https://taoofmac.com/space/dev/Python](https://taoofmac.com/space/dev/Python)
(as well as hundreds of other similar pages) has a bunch of links and
resources I found useful or notable, for instance.

These days most of what I write is online, too, although I have bunches of
OneNote shared notebooks and other accoutrements that come with working at a
large corporation (Microsoft in this case).

In previous jobs we used Wikis (Trac, PhpWiki, GitLab, etc.), mailing-lists,
the works.

I would suggest picking something with proper versioning and access control
regardless - OneNote has the additional benefit of having decent (if slowish)
mobile clients that let you take some of the info with you offline on trips,
but that’s likely not a priority given the scenario you outline.

------
tvanantwerp
My office of mostly non-programmers is looking for a knowledge base solution.
A lot of these recommendations seem geared toward developers. I'm curious what
user-friendly, dead-simple products are available. (Note: markdown files in a
git repo only meets these criteria for people like me, not for my coworkers.)

~~~
benhurmarcel
In my team (also non-programmers) we're going for Google Docs in a folder
structure. It's straightforward enough for most people and has all essential
features. And my company went for G Suite so that fits well.

I just wished Google had a tool (or view in Docs) to make a note rather than a
letter-type document. More like Dropbox Paper, less like Word. At least to get
rid of the paper width and page separation.

For companies going for Office 365, Onenote is probably the best choice.

------
0xCMP
We do not use Notion where I work, but if I were doing something today I'm not
sure why I'd pick anything else.

Primary reasons: Pages are easily created, can easily create templates for
pages (reduce friction, increase consistency), easily shared among many
people, and their "databases" feature which makes structuring all those pages
much easier.

e.g. Have team meetings? Create a meetings database and change the default
"new page" template to one with all the required areas to cover. Add some
fields in the database for the date, who is in the meeting, where it took
place, or whatever else is relevant.

If you keep projects in Notion you can link between databases and to other
pages within the same database to provide links to relevant projects. Looking
up all meetings referring to a project is as easy as filtering for all
meetings with that page.

~~~
eugenekolo2
My issue with notion is that it doesn't support sharing PDFs/PPTs besides
sharing the entire page. I'd like for it to backup my PDFs which is does onto
AWS... but the links are gigantic (2k characters) and expire.

------
olegp
We use [https://nuclino.com](https://nuclino.com) at Toughbyte. Here's their
Show HN from a while back:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14865666](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14865666)

~~~
bjoernm
Thanks for mentioning us! Let me know if you have any feedback or questions –
I'm a co-founder.

------
znq
At Mobile Jazz (fully remote company) we've a weekly 1-hour video-conference
call dedicated to sharing knowledge and experiences with each other. For that
we share a Google Doc where everyone has a section to write down a few
bullets, add links or images. Then in the call everyone gets 2-3 minutes to
talk. Usually it takes less than a minute and we have the other 2 minutes to
discuss.

For the actual organization of knowledge we use Slack (#team room for work
related stuff, #coffee room for everything else) and then for the serious
information and processes we use a Wiki (Google Sites) and Asana.

We've also written an extensive Company Handbook [PDF] which can be downloaded
here for free: [https://mobilejazz.com/company-handbook-
pdf](https://mobilejazz.com/company-handbook-pdf)

------
awestbro
I actually launched [https://ulluminate.com](https://ulluminate.com) to help
with knowledge sharing. I found myself looking through my bookmarks far too
often to share things with friends and coworkers. I wanted a tool where I
could segment my bookmarks into private, shared, and public spaces and provide
annotations as to why I thought the link was helpful. Also the ability to
search a link and domain across the network of public bookmarks will be really
cool for discovering like minded people and subjects.

I still have A LOT of work to do on it, but the goal is to make it really
valuable for team and peer communication. I think if you use a bookmark
extension to navigate your organization's structure, it should stay more up to
date than a wiki (at least thats my hope).

------
alexchamberlain
Sharing knowledge is tough; I don't think there's a silver bullet and everyone
wishes they could do it better. Some strategies we use: \- Mailing Lists - a
collection of mailing lists people can subscribe to if they're interested in a
topic. Bonus points if you dedupe messages, as it's kind of annoying to get
the same message more than once. We BCC to avoid Reply-to-All
discussions/arguments. \- Discussion board - discourse... \- Q&A - stack
exchange like Q&A \- Cross-team focus groups - these come in many flavours
from "group level" (several teams sharing a common manager) to company wide.
Some organise meetups/presentations that are really popular.

I'd encourage "all" of the above in some flavour or another, as people learn
and teach differently.

~~~
wakatime
Mailing lists is a trap. As your company grows it implements a data retention
policy and poof, there goes all your knowledge when your old emails are auto-
deleted.

Only use mailing lists for notification with links to the actual knowledge in
a real document.

~~~
alexchamberlain
I think it's best to 1) store the original messages outside your email system
and 2) keep discussions to discourse or similar. That way, you have tools
designed for the job and independent storage of discussions.

------
rajaganesh87
[https://joplinapp.org](https://joplinapp.org)

------
IOT_Apprentice
Each person has their own OneNote. No one shares on the company OneNote, as it
is not documented how to do so and IT seems to be clueless about it.

Beyond that we have MediaWiki which is a tar pit of ancient and current
information that has horrendous search/filtering.

No one is maintaining it from an archival standpoint and there is a mixture of
old commentary on obsolete alpha/beta engineering releases from decades ago,
along with all sorts of old material that may or may not be relevant.

It is excruciating. I've created new content, that I can't find through the
search box, so thankfully I bookmark it in the browser or look to see what
items I've edited.

------
roland35
Work: OneNote, now that Office 365 it is basically "built in" to everyone's
computer and it does not require any training for non-developers (as much as
I'd prefer markdown or org mode!)

Personal: My family uses Google's drive, so we have a large document which has
our current schedule, projects on the to do list, shopping lists, etc etc. We
spin off separate docs for big projects such as our home renovation or list of
contractors we've worked with. Combined with scanned invoices, this makes
everything searchable from one place which is nice.

I initially wanted to try something like Trello but the google doc has worked
best for us!

------
daniel_iversen
I use our own product (Asana - [http://asana.com](http://asana.com)) to
coordinate all our work and it's also become a library and "brain" for
everything that's happened. Personally I also use and love Dropbox Paper
([http://paper.dropbox.com](http://paper.dropbox.com)) for more long-form or
ongoing research on topics both professionally and personally (I create a doc
that I'll work on for a long time and can easily part it and come back to it,
even share it with other people etc).

------
kpennell
I've been really enjoying Notion. I used to use evernote and apple notes.
Apple notes is still so much faster for quick stuff. But for
writing/thinking/capturing etc. I'm in the notion camp.

------
secretsinger
Work: Our team has an extensive set of interlinked linked google docs for
everything from how to set up your dev env to the plan for the week and
logistics for off-sites. As well as a thorough README.md for every project we
work on.

What makes the above work is a simple protocol: if someone teaches you how to
do something, you're responsible for writing that something down. It's a
simple honor system, but people tend to stick to it, and the result is an ever
growing, live body of knowledge.

Life: Bullet Journal is pure magic, when I manage to stick to it :/

------
john2smith
I was searching for such tools and founded a useful one Restya. Restya is a
productivity and management tool specifically built around a Kanban-style
workflow. Great for personal use (FREE) and scales easily to business and team
use. We use it daily for managing our project workflow. I work closely with
the developers, so feedback is always great. Restya is an excellent free
Trello alternative
[https://restya.com/board/comparison](https://restya.com/board/comparison).

------
missjellyfish
At work I just made a huge organization overhaul. Previously, the entire state
of a project was scattered throughout some markdown files in an absurdly
complex git repository, a gitlab wiki and a stash of hand-written notes.

It's now all nice and tidy in a Confluence space. Let's see how it goes and
how this holds up when more people start working on this project again. I for
myself are diciplined enough to care about good documentation, but my last
colleagues left a huge pile of chaos which took a few months to sort out after
they left.

~~~
sniuff
Have you thought about having markdowns rendered to a Confluence page? And
maybe Confluence edits could get rendered back to git.

For the first use case, there are libraries available that sync your .md to
Confluence which you could add to your CI system.

~~~
khakkarainen
With a bit of tweaking, Pandoc does a good job of rendering HTML that
Confluence likes. I wrote some scripts a couple of years ago to do this, using
the Confluence API to add and update pages. It’s also possible to do a round-
trip because someone will invariably edit the Confluence page.

------
mlitwiniuk
Actually this is something we try to do with tiomsu.com [1] (gaelic for ‘a
compilation’ ;) ). We're not yet ready for a public launch (will be in week or
two), but there is a short video showing what we're doing [2] (sorry for
strange resolution, it was planned for constant playback on ipad).

[1] [https://tiomsu.com](https://tiomsu.com) [2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mx7Ai-
PhvAM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mx7Ai-PhvAM)

------
supercanuck
At our organization we use One Notes that serve as sort of Wiki's

------
iamemadkhan
My biggest inspiration was
[https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/](https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/)

I just started my own Gitbook wiki
[https://wiki.emadkhan.net/](https://wiki.emadkhan.net/) and whenever I
synthesize all this raw data with some insights I want to share, I'll blog
about it at [http://www.emadkhan.net/](http://www.emadkhan.net/)

------
lokinkl
I believe it is less about the tools to pick, but more about building the
culture. Especially how to build the knowledge sharing culture among a small
group of people at the beginning and spread it across the company.

But still, a good enough tool is a must.

We build knowledge base software Kipwise and have been helping various
companies build their knowledge sharing flow.

Our focus is to help customers establish a culture. We start with the managers
and seniors, and facilitate them to spread the culture among their own teams
step by step.

It takes time.

------
lettergram
We are working on a rather intuitive way to do that:

[http://insideropinion.com/](http://insideropinion.com/)

Basically, the AI determines everyone’s expertise and ranks content and
people. We also have plans for AI Q&A.

In most companies you use things such as Confluence, Github/Gitlab wikis,
Slab, Jive and tons of other page systems. The problem is still searching them
effectively. Also most knowledge is actually in people’s heads. So you still
have to search for the authors.

------
grwthckrmstr
Nelson Joyce is building Tettra to solve the very problem you're describing

Nelson on Twitter -
[https://twitter.com/nelsonjoyce](https://twitter.com/nelsonjoyce)

Tettra - [https://tettra.co](https://tettra.co)

Edit: I'm not affiliated to him or Tettra in any way. I just follow his
Twitter for his transparency and useful insights in building a company. Hence
I would happily recommend his product to anyone facing the exact problem

------
overload119
I use the following stack:

1\. Caret ([https://caret.io/](https://caret.io/)) for taking notes. It's a
simple Markdown note taker with some really nice features. It outputs plain
.md files and works with folder.

2\. All my Markdown file are in a folder synced on Dropbox.

3\. I use a custom Alfred workflow which uses riggrep to search very quickly
through the notes.

One thing to mention is that I want my stack to be private, so this doesn't
publish anything to the web but it does sync.

------
mettamage
For work use I haven't found a good system. For personal use, I do the
following:

\- Sublime for very quick temp text files.

\- Apple Notes for quick notes or for non-health related notes.

\- TiddlyWiki for health tracking and identity tracking (e.g. what I value in
life). Note: it's a bit unconventional to do questionnaires in TiddlyWiki, but
it can be done quite well. Especially now that I know how their plugin
ecosystem works and can extend the system with JavaScript. I'm happy to share
my template.

\- BoostNotes for coding snippet.

------
lhenk
We created a new website with Gatsby exactly for this: [https://til.cybertec-
postgresql.com/](https://til.cybertec-postgresql.com/)

Each day, a GitHub Actions bot chooses one of the open post PRs and merges it.

The content is open source here: [https://github.com/cybertec-
postgresql/today-i-learned-conte...](https://github.com/cybertec-
postgresql/today-i-learned-content)

------
shahidmughal
For me knowledge sharing is about first having ideas captured in a suitable
form. I have been using mindmapping software and find them amazingly useful in
team meetings. No more powerpoint agony. Meetings go very smooth. Everybody
sees the context visually when a mindmap is used for capturing the whole
meeting interactively. Sharing them is easy as well. Just export to pdf and
send after the meeting.

------
muon
At work, I use Confluence to log and share knowledge and I also ask others to
do the same. Over a period of time, this has worked wonders.

------
kvdmolen
Would love to get in touch with you as we are developing a tool at this
moment, exactly for this purpose. Target is a cross between jira and notion.
your experience is valuable, and you would be granted life-free usage.

Edit: Agree with afarrell though a good tool should guide processes and be
actively used also in operations for information And knowledge not to be
dated.

@kvdmolen

------
bryanmgreen
Self-promo: I'm currently building software called Thanks For Sharing.

At launch, we'll be focusing on features that help employees to provide
feedback to their organization leaders.

We're also exploring requirements for building out internal knowledge bases
for organizations that have more sharing and communicative elements. Link in
my bio if any are interested.

------
airnomad
I try to use Jira whenever I can. It sucks. But the thing is everything else
also suck so for me Jira sucks a little bit less.

~~~
stinos
Apart from being pretty slow, I don't think Jira really sucks once a) it is
configured to your needs b) you know how to use it (which should be fairly
easy with a in place). Which goes for pretty much any tool more complicated
than notepad, so to speak: it's not like the other similar tools out there are
much better, just different, imo. Though I have the impression a lot of people
who think Jira sucks might be using it where they actually don't need it
because much simpler tools could suffice in their particular situation.

~~~
airnomad
All tools suck in a way that actual reality of doing work is complicated and
tools are obviously way simpler so you end up trying to reduce the reality to
fit the model of a particular tool.

That explains why email is still the most used tool. It also sucks but you can
do any type of project with email and everyone knows how to use it.

------
colecut
QOwnNotes, cross platform open source app for
creating/editing/tagging/searching markdown files, synced with NextCloud. I've
finally found the system that doesn't hold me back, and I've stopped looking
for anything better.

This is for my own personal use, maybe/probably not as suitable for a team.

------
fsiefken
A combination of indexed markdown documents, org-mode with orgzly (android)
and devonthink (macos) as a gui Thinking of using TiddlyWiki as gui again as
it works with Firefox Reality in the Oculus Go and Quest, but it doesn't work
well with markdown and org-mode documents. Perhaps use it as yet another
system.

------
miki123211
Rwtxt.com for personal stuff. Minimalist, simple, supports markdown, exports
data and can be self-hosted with no hassle (it's a go binary, and that can run
anywhere, and it uses sqlite, so no complicated db setups). It works for small
groups too, though it breaks when two people try to edit aat the same time.

------
emilsoman
I have a directory named “mystuff” that’s gitignored globally, in every
repository I work on. This is where I store commands, snippets, scripts,
ideas, meeting notes etc. To organize things I find on the web, I simply use
bookmark folders in the browser.

In our company we use both github wiki and google drive to share knowledge.

------
kuznero
I've tried a lot before. Ended up creating a tiny wrapper around my terminal
text editor: [https://crates.io/crates/mj](https://crates.io/crates/mj)

It essentially is markdown files in the fixed directory structure, searchable
and simple.

------
sytelus
I use [http://diigo.com](http://diigo.com) to quickly bookmark/tag/annotate
links I find. It is about the most advanced bookmark manager out there with
capabilities to store copy of page/pdf with annotations, search content etc.

------
jbillow2000
I've used Bookmark OS for bookmarking for a couple years and have recently
started using it for notes as well. It allows for sharing folders of bookmarks
and notes with teams [https://bookmarkos.com](https://bookmarkos.com)

------
mdeligoz
Recently I found out Balsa ([https://github.com/balsa-
team/balsa](https://github.com/balsa-team/balsa)) - which looks promising
since it has a WYSIWYG editor with comments, plus can be deployed on premises.

------
sureshn
[http://fellow.co](http://fellow.co) has been immensely helpful for me , it
has every thing I need to manage information at work place and also has a
personal section which is useful. I would recommend you to give this a try

------
swtrs
Personal : small library of notebooks, I generally dont share these

Professionally : physical notebooks and Onenote books. Every time I join a new
team I start a new notebook and when I leave I pass it to someone else if they
want it. My Onenote files are publicly accessible to anyone.

------
tasogare
Mostly meetings and word of mouth. That's why I lose one week+ on a lab
software that I cannot make run on my local development machine. Even personal
projects I spend a few months on are better documented than the software that
is used here in production.

------
tekkk
I use google keep for writing notes. In work we use the enterprise garbage all
others use too. Google calender for datespecific stuff. Anything coding
specific i have in github as markdown documents, some remain as drafts in my
blog repository.

------
albogdano
Our team uses a Q&A system called Scoold for knowledge sharing. It's basically
a Stack Overflow clone and has great team support.
[https://scoold.com](https://scoold.com)

------
theshrike79
Confluence for team sharing. Also copious comments in the code, documenting
WHY something is written as it is.

I recently replaced org-mode with Joplin. My more visual notes are in OneNote,
which supports the Apple Pencil for drawing and writing.

------
tartavull
vimwiki has been life transformational for me.

~~~
supersrdjan
+1

------
twknotes
Shameless plug: Twinkle Notes is a cross platform solution for building
private personal and team knowledge base. Currently in beta.

[https://twinkle.app](https://twinkle.app)

------
nikivi
I write into bunch of markdown files and push to GitHub:

[https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge](https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge)

------
greyltc
[gollum]([https://github.com/gollum](https://github.com/gollum)) powers
GitHub's wikis. I've used it and it seems alright.

------
honkycat
I tried notion and coda, which are both AMAZING products and are vastly
superior to Google docs.

But I ended up back at Google docs. Everyone has it, simplifies sharing and
planning vacations massively.

------
lulukeke
I like to use [https://www.are.na/](https://www.are.na/) to collaborate and
collect ideas, knowledge etc.

------
verumnoslib
You can use [https://wreeto.com](https://wreeto.com). It's easy to share
organised knowledge with a public link.

------
jasoncbenn
At Sourceress we formalized skillsharing with a simple spreadsheet. Now,
engineers teach each other the skills that we want to spread throughout the
org.

------
g8oz
Personal: Onenote - for mobile and tablet Work: Confluence wiki

 _How_ you organize/classify/process information is more important than the
tool imo.

------
verumnoslib
I use Google Calendar to schedule things to be done.

For note-taking, I use [https://wreeto.com](https://wreeto.com).

------
ghettolabs
I'm working on a mobile app with flutter that lets me take personal notes and
also keep track of my side projects.

------
k__
Mostly in my brain, some of it in a calendar and even less in my smartphones
note app.

------
atilimcetin
At work I've started using Balsa and at home I usually use Sublime+git.

------
stunt
Automation and efficient documentation.

Proper ownership and decoupling teams and services.

Pair programming.

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edpichler
By the way, does anyone has tried Stackorvelflow for teams? Is it good?

~~~
Insanity
We tried. It's pretty much like the normal stack overflow (Question and Answer
based).

But we found that in the end - a normal wiki was actually more useful. I think
this was mainly because of how our organization works. We're all physically on
the same campus, at most a colleague is 2 minutes walking away. Hence we tend
to often have in-person communication, or first via Slack, after which a
colleague walks over to explain it anyway..

Using a wiki, the person knowledgeable about the domain can just create a
document to refer people to which is quite natural. What is not natural for
this person is to create a question and then answer it himself. (I know you
could use SO as a wiki but than you're losing some of the utility anyway).

I'm not saying that it can't work, but a lot depends on company culture /
structure, at least I think so. So if you're in a situation where people often
post questions on slack and people respond through slack, maybe SO is a good
alternative.

(Oh also, on another note, during our test people would post question on SO
and no one would answer because no one is looking, or people think "someone
else will answer" and don't bother to check up later. Via slack, at least it's
more visible and scoped to the correct channel with the correct people for the
domain).

YMMV ofc :)

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pixelcoins
We use teamemo(teamemo.com), a german based wiki-software at work.

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agsilvio
I use my deep, mind-mapping tool: jumproot.com.

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polyterative
Trello everything

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billconan
does blogging count? I write blogs to share what I learn and I learned a lot
from other bloggers.

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adebelov
My team and I use Taskade at Go X.

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RocketSyntax
Apple Notes + Confluence + Slack.

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Wistar
Yellow Post-It notes, mainly.

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amelius
A wiki comes to mind.

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tknstp
i write notes with a web system build my own.

------
gwbas1c
I'm a stickler for well-written tickets.

In general: All products have a few pieces of information that must be clearly
provided in a bug report (or support escalation.) For my product, (desktop
file sync,) this includes build version, unedited log files, filenames, and
clear steps to reproduce.

Industry-wide, a clear ticket title that is more than "XXX doesn't work," that
uses known product terminology, is also important. [Edit] Also critical is
that information that defines what the ticket is, such as clarifications, and
updating the steps to reproduce, shouldn't be buried in comments. Edit the
ticket description.

Poorly-written tickets, either because they are missing agreed-upon
information, like log files, or because they just don't explain what the
problem is, are sent back. I tell all my engineers to regularly look through
their tickets and send anything back that's confusing; so once they are able
to work on the ticket, everything they need is there.

Another critical thing: It's important that tester follow good practice for
_your specific product_. I've had testers attach videos, but ignore log files.
Videos might be very useful in a product that the tester worked on in an old
job, but they very rarely are helpful when trying to diagnose why a file isn't
uploading. (That's why we have logs.)

The final critical thing: Managers must respect what engineers need in
tickets. This means that the testers' manager should be instructing testers in
the specific items of information that they need to collect for your product.
If a manger doesn't respect the fact that you need logs (or whatever else you
need) present in every bug report, your problem isn't communication. It's that
you have a manager who doesn't respect the needs of your business.

[Edit] Why is it important to be a stickler, and make sure that tickets are
well written? When you have to look at a LOT of tickets, you don't have the
time to read through 100 comments in each ticket, and then spend an hour
trying to reproduce the ticket just to understand what the problem is. If you
have a lot of tickets that don't make sense within the first 60 seconds that
you look at the ticket, then you need to figure out how to improve ticket
quality.

Another thing: Don't combine bugs into the same ticket. This happens when
testers start doing things like failing verification because they found a
_new_ bug. (Does the ticket refer to the new bug or the old bug. How come,
when I follow the steps to reproduce, I can't reproduce the bug?) This also
happens when testers think that the same bug has multiple steps to reproduce.
It's always easier to close a bug as a duplicate, than the fix one bug in a
ticket and keep the ticket open for the other bug.

