
Show HN: Open Source Search Engine to Learn Anything - nikivi
https://learn-anything.xyz/
======
primitivesuave
This is a brilliant idea and I love the minimal design. I was most inspired
when I found that all the data is easily accessible through GitHub. I think
the most important missing piece right now is authentication - if you
implemented GitHub OAuth you could make it much easier for people to make
contributions and record their progress without having to roll out your own
authentication. You could also potentially save a user's progress and custom
mind maps in a gist, eliminating the need to even have your own database.

I checked out the roadmap ([https://learn-
anything.github.io/2017/06/15/roadmap.html](https://learn-
anything.github.io/2017/06/15/roadmap.html)) and your comment below about a
visual editor, and am now so excited to see where this project goes and hope
to find ways I can contribute to it!

~~~
nikivi
Thank you a lot for the kind comment.

Our next update is focused on authentication and 'personalising' the search
engine as much as possible. Some features we plan to add are :

\- Ability to bookmark maps

\- Ability to mark maps as learned

\- Ability to see a progress bar of how many maps you have learned compared to
how many maps there exist

\- Ability to create and share learning paths with other people. A learning
path is a collection of maps that can be followed to achieve some goal or
skill like becoming a web developer.

\- We also want to create APIs that other developers can use to build their
own visualisations and use our search and our public database in their own
projects

\- We also want to add ability to trigger nodes as learned and ability to hide
nodes you dislike or have learned

\- We also plan to add a text editor that is tied to your account so users can
make notes on various topics they have learned or discovered

Our goal with this is to make it a completely personal search engine for
learning any topic in this world in the most efficient way. Everything is open
source too so if anyone wants to fork it and create their own search engine,
they can.

If you want to help us with this, please do. We have an active Slack channel
we use for all our communication.

[https://knowledge-
map.slack.com/shared_invite/MTgxNTYzMjIzNj...](https://knowledge-
map.slack.com/shared_invite/MTgxNTYzMjIzNjM5LTE0OTQzMzA4MDAtYzY1YWY0ZDc0NQ)

There are also lots of open issues on our search engine we can certainly wish
to get help with :

[https://github.com/learn-anything/search-
engine/issues](https://github.com/learn-anything/search-engine/issues)

~~~
Top19
This is great, thanks for building. Leaving for work but really deeply truly
can't wait to play around with this tonight.

------
blacksmith_tb
The idea is great, the results seem a little minimal so far, "Mandarin
Chinese" produced one result, "Arduino" was a bit better, "knot tying" was a
null result. There's a lot of info on contributing which is great, but the
process is not what I'd call easy - I'd think especially on searches that
return nil it'd be good to throw up some kind of form, and ask the user if
they wouldn't mind clicking through to the DDG results, looking at a few of
the top hits, and then pasting in what they found to be the most helpful?

~~~
nikivi
The idea is that each map is open for contributions so all maps can be
improved with the help of the community. Right now new things can be added by
adding things directly to the JSON code that generates these maps but soon we
will have a visual editor to simply this process even further.

And we provide a fallback search to DuckDuckGo in cases where no map is found
for what you are searching for. We are also thinking of releasing a browser
extension that will do what you proposed. You collect links from outside and
then come back to our search engine and help improve it.

~~~
rhizome
_The idea is that each map is open for contributions so all maps can be
improved with the help of the community. Right now new things can be added by
adding things directly to..._

Like DMOZ?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMOZ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMOZ)

------
Khanthulhu
I really dig this website. When I want to learn a new topic my first step is
always to discover the scope of the topic and find sources so this site is a
real help.

Pro-tip: type in 'everything'

------
goda90
I have to say that the UI confused me for a moment. The fact that what I
searched didn't stay in the search box, and instead it replaced it with a new
suggested search term was confusing.

~~~
nikivi
Sorry you found this confusing. We show suggestions in greyed out text to
encourage new searches for new things you can learn about.

The goal of this search engine is to let users both explore and search for
what they need, not just search like what you can do with conventional search
engines.

~~~
goda90
I think it's just a matter of the dominant elements on the page. The thing you
searched is in small text beneath the very large search bar so it takes a
moment to figure out what is going on. Otherwise very cool, good work!

------
tyleranton
Awesome tool, Nikita! This is a great step into organized, open knowledge.

------
lousken
Can't see the map in MS Edge.

~~~
nikivi
Sorry about this. This is an open issue still, sadly no one for our team has
MS edge to test it on.

There is a pending issue on the search engine for this :

[https://github.com/learn-anything/search-
engine/issues/54](https://github.com/learn-anything/search-engine/issues/54)

We certainly would love some help on this from people who own MS Edge and can
help test it there.

~~~
lousken
You can use [https://www.browserstack.com/](https://www.browserstack.com/) or
VM with edge to test it [https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-
edge/tools/v...](https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-
edge/tools/vms/) :)

edit: edge testing is free in browserstack

