
Show HN: Everything I Know Wiki - nikivi
https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz
======
kjksf
I do a similar thing at
[https://blog.kowalczyk.info/](https://blog.kowalczyk.info/) (under "My
external brain"), e.g. section on programming:
[https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/d61b4f94b10d4d808d3d238a...](https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/d61b4f94b10d4d808d3d238a4e7c4d10/programming.html)

I build a custom toolchain to generate it.

All the content is stored in Notion (which is the fastest way I found to write
and edit content).

I wrote a Go program
([https://github.com/kjk/blog](https://github.com/kjk/blog)) to convert that
to html and deploy as a static site to Netlify, on their generous free plan.

I also generate the rest of the website (mostly blog) from content in Notion.

Since the code is open source, others can adopt it.

~~~
cpach
Interesting! What is Notion?

~~~
greyskull
Looks like it's this: [https://www.notion.so/](https://www.notion.so/)

It wasn't clear to me how the data was exported, but it seems the author built
his own library:
[https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/88aee8f43620471aa9dbcad2...](https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/88aee8f43620471aa9dbcad28368174c/how-
i-reverse-engineered-notion-api.html)

~~~
malnourish
I just began looking into Notion as an alternative to OneNote.

It appears that you can also export the majority of your data as shown here:
[https://www.notion.so/Export-to-PDF-or-markdown-
ebb66c27de32...](https://www.notion.so/Export-to-PDF-or-markdown-
ebb66c27de324f4287fe609c6c03fd73)

------
aj_g
Really cool project. How do you differentiate between things that have been
too internalized/are too obvious and things that are worth writing down? i.e.
you don't have a section for basic algebra, because I can only assume you know
that pretty well.

~~~
nikivi
In similar vein to this tweet
([https://mobile.twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/10272457592326...](https://mobile.twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/1027245759232651270?lang=en))
I mostly try to organize files by topic. Some topics I didn’t come across so
have no notes/links to share. Other topics may be included inside other files.

Before starting this wiki, I already got some experience in organizing and
visualizing knowledge in some way with the Learn Anything project.

~~~
aboutruby
> move files around until it feels right

Which I find true too, modulo obvious conventions like bin/ doc/ public/ etc.

------
alexpetralia
Using a system of personal knowledge management (PKM) has been a huge boon for
me. Just the act of jotting down all my ideas whenever I have them (Google
Keep), then dedicating time to structuring/curating them into an organized
format (Microsoft OneNote), and then being able to quickly access them in the
future has helped my retention and creativity immensely. I just see patterns I
never would have recorded or remembered otherwise. Sometimes it's a pain to
dedicate a few hours every weekend to structuring all this information but
I've found the long term benefit to far outweigh that cost.

~~~
fartcannon
Aren't you worried that google or Microsoft will deprecate your personal
library? Google isn't exactly good at keeping non-gmail programs in good shape
and my original MS One note files simply do not open anymore. Do you at least
keep a plain text file somewhere?

It just seems like such a delicate choice of software to use for something
like your personal knowledge. Certainly a wiki of some kind would be better?

~~~
opan
I had a similar thought to this. I was shocked that he was willingly and
publicly making proprietary software such a part of his life, and I thought of
emacs org-mode, but maybe he doesn't like that sort of workflow. I've only
barely used org myself, but I've seen a lot of thoughtbot talks and such that
make me feel like bringing it up in case someone goes farther with it than I
did.

~~~
doomjunky
Thanks to GDPR now everyone can export all their data.

------
robobro
This reminds me of the project ran by scholar Avery Morrow, "Everything Shii
Knows."[0] He was an early Wikipedia administrator and one of the founders of
4chan. It was really interesting.

Great work OP, personal wikis are very cool! I wish there were more of them :(

[0]
[http://shii.bibanon.org/shii.org/knows/Everything_Shii_Knows...](http://shii.bibanon.org/shii.org/knows/Everything_Shii_Knows.html)

~~~
bcaa7f3a8bbc
It reminds me of Shii's wiki, too. Shii's wiki is not only a personal
knowledge base, but also a piece of important documentation of Internet
cultural history.

Unlike the pre-2000 Usenet era, Internet culture today (e.g. those on 4chan)
is no longer systematic documented, and for better or worse, it has a
significant influence to the "cyberspace" as a whole. But when people started
to realize the existence of something, it's already too late to understand it,
original records have been all lost... And people started shouting, "what the
hell is going on?"

Written documentation like Shii's wiki is the rare treasure of a time capsule,
a snapshot of the time. At Shii's wiki, 2006 never ends.

I'm particularly interested in the history of online culture of obscure
political movements (including those crazy conspicary theorists and
nationalists). It'n not that I'm morally approving their actions, but to me,
they seem to be a new type of social organization in the information age. From
Shii's wiki, written by a intelligent person who's observing and thinking
about these topics, you can see many indications in 2006 about the status of
things and how it's connected to the present day.

For example...

* How the Web was Lost

[http://shii.bibanon.org/shii.org/knows/How_the_Web_was_Lost....](http://shii.bibanon.org/shii.org/knows/How_the_Web_was_Lost.html)

This 2006 article describes the upcoming demise of Internet utopianism. The
massive commercialization was transforming the Internet to just another TV,
telephone, or a shopping mall. It also mentioned how giving everyone access to
information can have the side-effect of disintegrating information authority
and good writing, and causes the polarization of extremes in politics.

> _Will we ever have another Thomas Paine standing in the street, telling us
> common sense that changes our lives? Those are rhetorical questions. The
> answer is no. There will be no more shots heard round the world, no more
> revelations shocking the whole nation at once. The Web is a difficult
> freight train to turn around, and it will likely destroy those lines of
> communication._

These topics/issues are NOT identified and explored by the Internet
personalities/analysis/mass media until recently.

For example, this article _Why isn 't the internet more fun and weird?_
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19038327](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19038327))
was only posted on HN, two months ago. And _What the Hell Is Going On? Effects
of Information Abundance._
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19413852](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19413852))
was only posted on HN, 7 days ago.

Another example about politics.

* Project for the New American Century ([http://shii.bibanon.org/shii.org/knows/Project_for_the_New_A...](http://shii.bibanon.org/shii.org/knows/Project_for_the_New_American_Century.html)), Ron Paul ([http://shii.bibanon.org/shii.org/knows/Ron_Paul.html](http://shii.bibanon.org/shii.org/knows/Ron_Paul.html)), and NAFTA ([http://shii.bibanon.org/shii.org/knows/NAFTA.html](http://shii.bibanon.org/shii.org/knows/NAFTA.html)).

Before Donald Trump gets popular in 2016 on the Internet, this trend can be
traced back to (1) free trade and globalization, (2) September 11th, (3)
hatred of neoconservatism online, which caused (4) many to support Pon Paul,
(5) whose supporters were later disillusioned. Then the (6) Great Recession
and (7) Obama occurred. It was a very complicated chain of events, which were
all partially documented in Shii's wiki.

The bottom-line is, I think Shii must have gained some deep insights about
everything by reading through the endless shitposts on 4chan. I wonder if
Donald Trump never ran for the president, it may take another 10 years for the
common people to realize these issues.

If you are involved in some online community, please consider to create your
personal knowledge base. 20 years later, it may become the only historical
records of something.

~~~
petra
Fascinating.

How does on go on to finding the next shii , telling us what will happen next
with such accuracy and insight ?

~~~
bcaa7f3a8bbc
I think you've missed my point. I'm not saying that Shii was a wizard, oracle
or prophet, and we should find the next one to predict the future for us. When
looking back, things are often pretty straightforward and clear, hindsight is
always 20/20.

Instead, what I'm saying is that, he preserved an important segment of the
history for us by creating his personal knowledge base, especially that, it
was written by someone who was an Internet-native, worked extensively on
Wikipedia at its early time, and credited as one influential figure who shaped
early 4chan. So we can use the material from his knowledge base to gain some
insights about some parts of the undocumented history.

And I think it's another advantage of an knowledge base - it can provide a
good record of history from a personal perspective, more comprehensive than a
blog or diary.

------
krelian
This is great and extremely interesting. I imagine me and you (and many others
here on HN) fall in the spectrum were many of our interests converge so
reading some of the things you wrote is in many ways a different take on my
own interests and chances of finding something new of interest are quite high!

------
MarcysVonEylau
On the other side of the spectrum we got "Things I don't know as of 2018" [1].
I really appreciate when people share what they do and don't know.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18780065](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18780065)

------
Quequau
Back when I was getting my degree and was reading & writing a lot I got really
enamored with the idea having an extensive repository of everything I had read
or learned or simply come across and found interesting.

There are all sorts of software packages designed to facilitate this, I used
DevonThink for a fairly long time. However, it never turned out to be nearly
as useful or fulfilling as I had imagined going in and truth be told I just
couldn't maintain the self discipline that the curation requires.

So now I have this ginormous unused data store that I don't want to mess with
but nevertheless still can't bring myself to delete.

------
mpoteat
I don't see transparency as necessarily a virtue to optimize over everything
else, or even a terminal good in itself.

Consider: Would it be wise for a CIA agent to run an "Everything I know" site?
No, because they could be targeted through the information they blindly
broadcast. I know you're not in such a high-risk role yourself, but do you
never want to be important in the future, e.g. a CEO, founder, or a high-
ranking software engineer?

Knowledge is power, and sharing unnecessary information to strangers will
allow them to abuse it and you.

~~~
brazzledazzle
It’s important to strike a balance though. We all know engineers and sysadmins
who think that their value lies in the exclusive information/knowledge they
have or data sources they control. Working with hoarders like that is toxic.

~~~
nikivi
Agree with this 100%! The one thing I always try to optimize for in life is
ability to solve problems efficiently.

And in my mind this means empowering everyone else around me so they can build
even more awesome tools and ideas.

------
j7k6
Great work! I did something with a similar approach, although it's just kind
of a knowledge base for myself build with Jekyll and a little search function,
called "My Sysadmin Cheatsheet":
[https://docs.j7k6.org](https://docs.j7k6.org)

Did it mainly for myself, because I was tired of having to google for the same
problem more than once, but decided to make it public to kind of share my
knowledge with others.

~~~
bloopernova
This is fantastic! I love the live search results feature.

I don't suppose you have your source available with a free license?

EDIT: wait, I see it:
[https://github.com/j7k6/docs.j7k6.org](https://github.com/j7k6/docs.j7k6.org)

~~~
j7k6
Thanks! I'm actually thinking about releasing it as a standalone Jekyll theme
some time.

~~~
bloopernova
I'm not familiar with Jekyll. How much work was it to get your site up and
running besides the posts' content?

I'd love to be able to run the same kind of site you are - a series of
markdown posts with a live search frontend. Did you use a specific tutorial to
do that? Is there a Jekyll live-search plugin or whatever it uses?

------
pastastickers
> I also started making YouTube videos as I find the video format is often
> superior to just text and words.

No. A thousand times no.

------
NicoJuicy
Almost everything I know/find interesting is on
[http://handlr.sapico.me](http://handlr.sapico.me)

HTML is possible through a tag, but adding Links is just faster then writing
it down. Managing it through hierarchical/multiple tags makes it even more
easier.

There's a bookmarklet for the browser and I can share it on Android through
Tasker and autoshare

------
tnolet
Am I the only one here that thinks this is all a bit creepy? The technical
bits I get, but the parts on general life advice, especially the chapter on
“seduction” give me a very bleak image of the OP’s actual life.

I might be wrong, the OP might be the happiest person ever: I’m just picking
up a lot of different signals from this project and the writing in it.

~~~
leftyted
"Creepy" seems judgmental.

Many (most? all?) single, heterosexual men are somewhat preoccupied with how
to be attractive to women (the reverse is also true). Is this news to you?

I also have a negative reaction to you speculating about how "bleak" his life
is. I see this project as an attempt at absolute honesty. And if we're being
honest, doesn't everyone's life contain a fair amount of bleakness? We all
have insecurities. We all suffer tragedies. We're all wrong about various
things. Your comment seems basically uncharitable.

I wouldn't attempt to be honest about "everything I know" publicly, on the
internet. But I think a little charity is in order towards those who do make
that attempt.

~~~
tnolet
Yes, it's judgemental. This is a discussion forum and this is my view on it,
this is how I "judge" it. But honestly, I'm all for weird & quirky.

However, my response to reading this post and the blog/wiki was very different
than some of the more positive responses here. Ergo, the counter argument. I
didn't get the positive weird/quirky feeling, rather the opposite.

~~~
dTal
I can understand the "ick" factor - putting this much of oneself online,
without any contextual filter, embodies a level of intimacy unusual with
strangers. I don't think it's weird to find it discomfiting seeing notes about
machine learning side by side with relationship advice. It feels like a bit
much from one guy.

But I think it's very unfair to say it paints a very bleak picture of his
life. I jumped straight to the Seduction section after your comment, half-
expecting some kind of PUA crap. But it's just filled with the kind of solid
advice you get from your dad. Maintain eye contact. Don't slouch. Be honest
and genuine. Compliment effort, not intrinsic beauty. Flirt with body language
and small amounts of touch, but don't be aggressive. It's all pretty standard,
solid stuff.

~~~
gdy
"Maintain eye contact."

Well, you naturally want to look a woman in the eyes if you are genuinely
attracted to her, it's hard to resist.

If you need a manual on maintaining eye contact, you probably just want to
have sex with somebody, if not with this woman, than with another one.

The creepy part is that this section in wiki teaches you to simulate feelings
you don't actually have in order to get laid and this directly contradicts the
earlier section about being genuine.

The bleak part is that if you need to simulate attraction to a woman you are
missing something very good in your life.

~~~
Faark
> If you need a manual on maintaining eye contact, you probably just want to
> have sex with somebody, if not with this woman, than with another one.

Or your path through life didn't teach you prevailing mating rituals. That "it
comes natural" narrative is bullshit. Sure, will be the case most of the time.
But, you know, human experiences are on a wide spectrum, with many of them
fucked up in some way or another. And thus a lot of people can greatly benefit
from finding help to improve themselves and thus their mental health. I'd
generally consider this a good thing. Especially on such an important topics
as finding a significant other.

It's great you apparently naturally learned communication protocols regarding
flirting / body language / etc. And yes, PUA stuff can quickly become toxic
and not be to the benefit of all involved. But that doesn't seem to be the
case here. And you implying everyone who isn't a natural or wants to get
better must be "simulating feelings" is just... disappointing.

~~~
gdy
"just... disappointing"

I'd bet that is not how you really feel.

------
fretflip
Another digital commonplace book.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonplace_book](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonplace_book)

------
indogooner
This is pretty comprehensive. How do you manage to capture learning across
devices? For instance when I find some interesting link on my mobile, I read
and save it to Pocket but I don't like typing on mobile so I don't capture the
gist of it like I do on desktop. And now my Pocket items are so bloated that I
have no idea how to organize.

~~~
rmkrmk
If you're on iOS, I can't recommend working copy highly enough:
[https://workingcopyapp.com](https://workingcopyapp.com)

It's an awesome git client (event git-lfs) with an editor + preview engine
built in, it also provides everything iOS can offer regarding 3rd party
app/scripting integrations.

------
decasteve
Very cool. My thoughts went to the series Buckminster Fuller did called
“Everything I Know”. [1]

What inspired you to do this?

[1] [https://www.bfi.org/about-fuller/resources/everything-i-
know](https://www.bfi.org/about-fuller/resources/everything-i-know)

~~~
nikivi
I wrote about my inspiration of starting both Learn Anything and this wiki in
2017 as a journal entry in the wiki itself.

[https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/looking-
back/2017](https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/looking-back/2017)

------
mark_l_watson
Beautiful project.

If I understand the author’s motivations, they are likely to have written and
maintain this largely for their own use. I also keep a lot of notes about
things I know and information I may want to refer back to, but, I don’t have
my notes in a form that would be of much use to other people.

------
robertpelloni
[https://nathanwailes.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/MTOVT/overvie...](https://nathanwailes.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/MTOVT/overview)

This is my friend's wiki which also deserves some attention I think.

~~~
black-tea
I hope he has that information backed up locally. It scares me when people
invest so much time and effort into contributing to a closed platform.

------
polymath_potato
This is very cool. I am working on a similar project since past 2 weeks but
also plan on providing the resources(at least those which I think worked very
well for me) to readers. It is kind of a no-nonsense guide to learning
anything. Very inspired by this. Thanks

------
poisonborz
Its interesting to see how people reinvent this conept continually. This is
cool and certainly useful for slices of knowledge, but I think sadly
technology is still not at a point where this would be universally feasible.

Links and text is lightweight and searchable but rather fragile (because of
external dependencies) and incomplete. I use a filesystem for this purpose,
but that would be still cubersome to effectively share - I wish we'de be at a
point where hundreds of gigabytes/mixed form of media are easier and faster to
sync and manage.

------
azappella
I created a github repository[1] for my personal knowledge base. There are
other people doing this too[2]

[1]
[https://github.com/azappella/knowledge](https://github.com/azappella/knowledge)

[2] [https://github.com/RichardLitt/meta-
knowledge](https://github.com/RichardLitt/meta-knowledge)

------
xtracerx
This is a great project. I've been attempting to achieve a similar goal but
just by writing articles on topics I'm interested in. Even if its a synthesis
of other things I'm reading or studying. Essentially trying to boil a subject
down and re-explain it in a compelling way to help cement the knowledge.

------
andreygrehov
This looks very cool. I would like to see a combination of Learn Anything and
this wiki, but driven by a timeline, so that nodes align with the date they
were created at. And then in addition, it would be amazing to have an option
to explore other people's knowledge graphs. Is there anything like that?

------
galfarragem
I simply use a github repository but instead of being "everything I know" is
kind of "everything I'm (actively) learning and can't find (minimalistic
compiled) elsewhere". I have less will to document stuff that I already know
or stuff that is easy to find in a palatable form.

[https://github.com/archimodels/learning-
notes](https://github.com/archimodels/learning-notes)

------
Invictus0
I like this a lot and I wonder if it could work for me too. Currently, I use
the iOS Notes app as my thought archive but it's obviously not very organized.
One thing I notice about this project is that there are a ton of categories.
Having so many categories seems to be poor organization because you're likely
to have thoughts that overlap categories. Perhaps tagging would be a better
method of organization?

------
cmauniada
I personally struggle at times to grasp some concepts being a first generation
immigrant does have some effects but it’s also the lack of a deeper level of
communication. Seeing something like this spelled out in front of me with
every single little point about a person’s life choices is actually a really
interesting way of peeking into someone else’s mindset. So thanks for sharing.

------
goombastic
Anyone else use a paper notebook and writing long form? I somehow feel that it
helps with recall/refresh better than a lot of the wikis Ive tried out? A lot
of the times, one look at the page brings backs a photographic memory of the
context under which those notes were made. Type/electronic note taking doesn't
seem to cut it for me.

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
I'm a huge fan of writing in a paper journal, for more important stuff, i.e.
blog posts, video scripts, I'll use my Surface Pro + some OCR to get a rough
draft converted.

Something about the physical action of writing makes me retain information
better.

------
Paul_S
When they design a human like robot they should give it this wiki to learn how
to be more human. Or is it the other way round?

------
codemati
I really like this idea. I may steal it.

Thanks for sharing.

------
Waterluvian
What's the best way to get up and running with something like this that's
really easy to maintain?

~~~
aizatto
He actually uses Gitbook [https://www.gitbook.com/](https://www.gitbook.com/)

I’ve been doing the same too [https://www.aizatto.com/why-
gitbook](https://www.aizatto.com/why-gitbook)

~~~
chiefalchemist
Thanks for sharing both, but especially the second link.

There you said: "Organizing a lot of pages is difficult, even if nested..."

Any chance you've done, or know of an article titled something like: "GitBook
- If I Knew Then What I Know Now"?

The idea is ultra-intriguing. But before getting started it would certainly
help to not make the same mistakes others have already made.

tia

~~~
roboyoshi
GitBook is nice and I would recommend that if you want something that works
good for you out of the box. I personally write markdown files with typora and
then publish that to my own notes setup, which is simply mkdocs and some
tweaks.

~~~
chiefalchemist
I thought the fact that GitBooks has search is a nice and necessary touch. I'm
going to have to revisit the static site / blog generators. It's prefer to
publish to GL or GH, as well as (for that I have in mind) be able to accept
PRs.

------
bibyte
I got really inspired by it a few months ago and created my own repository.
Thank you for the idea OP.

------
foxhop
About 10 years ago I wrote wiki software called Pylowiki (Pylons/Python) which
I still use occasionally to write notes that don't really fit in my personal
blog.

Demo of it here: [https://www.foxhop.net](https://www.foxhop.net)

------
theicfire
I love this! I'm a big knowledge hoarder myself. My brain is mostly written
down in workflowy. I hope the day I die I'll be able to give friends/family
members this one bug massive doc for them to peruse.

------
caffo
I do something similar at
[http://www.rodrigofranco.com/](http://www.rodrigofranco.com/) — all using
Orgmode exports.

------
nikivi
Some more interesting discussion on personal wikis and workflows:

[https://lobste.rs/s/ord0rg/does_anyone_else_keep_their_own_k...](https://lobste.rs/s/ord0rg/does_anyone_else_keep_their_own_knowledge)

~~~
hk__2
Why are those called wikis? “personal wiki” sounds like “collaborative website
but with only one user”.

~~~
detaro
Probably because the term "wiki" is now also used for any website being made
using a wiki engine.

------
dannyw
Curious: what do you do for a living?

~~~
Paul_S
And where do you live where rent is 450 euros a month?

~~~
nikivi
Den Bosch in Netherlands

------
based2
linked to [https://github.com/learn-anything/learn-
anything#readme](https://github.com/learn-anything/learn-anything#readme)

------
chdaniel
Niki's wiki, right?

------
joelx
I also did this on joelx.com. See my philosophy links at top.

------
johnnymonster
first, just want to say this is pretty amazing!

------
Inu
I detect traces of Jordan Peterson. ;)

------
anewhnaccount2
The more things you try and do, participate in, and understand, the shallower
your knowledge will be of any one of those things.

~~~
camillomiller
A vast superficial knowledge, along with a good memory, the ability of making
meaningful connections between far away domains is a scarcely distributed
skillset and a quite valuable one in today's Western world.

~~~
dTal
I'd like to believe this were true. Personally I've found it very difficult to
find paid work that allows me to exercise even a fraction of my general
knowledge. My best results so far have been with underfunded startups who are
trying to do too much with too little - they need people who can tackle a
different challenge every week, because they can't afford to hire specialists.
But it's not a spectacular way to build a career.

Of course there are other kinds of value than monetary.

