Can someone explain this is — what it does and what it's used for? I'm not familiar with Notion at all and the page — which basically says you can use it for everything — is not helpful in this regard.
It sounds like a P2P shared note and document app but it's not clear to me.
"Knowledgebase apps" try to reconcile the fact that people (most people? all people?) think in sporadic and unstructured ways with the fact that maintaining data is mostly about codifying it into a structure.
So, instead of forcing a person to think "which app do I need to start getting some ideas sketched out", the app wants people to use it and then do whatever makes sense to them as a means of dumping all of the disparate knowledge into a bag so that it can be recalled, even if unstructured, later.
In an idealized example: if a writer got an idea, they would whip open the knowledgebase app and then...
- they might begin writing a list of characters and start detailing their relationships.
- they might upload a few photos of their local environment for remembering setting details, later.
- they might open a 'canvas' and put together a rough drawing of a new spaceship design they're mulling over.
- they might start working out the economy of their world by drafting an accounting table and assigning the trade networks.
The idea being that if any one of those tasks leads to any of the others (an inevitability), it's nice to just be able to scroll down the page and start on the new data without having to think "okay, which app do should I put this in"?
So, overall, it's about velocity of data recording. Some people just don't work that fast, or would prefer to consider HOW to think about an idea before they want to consider the idea, itself. So, for them, this may seem a bit like overkill. But there are definitely people whom can be far more productive if they can bounce around storing data as it surfaces in their mind, rather than when they have time to categorize it.
It's much more complicated than that and that's it's biggest downside. I've been trying to learn how to use it but it's quite confusing figuring out their terminology and UI.
One thing that I did with it was make a Recipe type that has any number of Ingredient types in it, takes any number or arbitrary Dietary Restriction tags (e.g. Gluten, Dairy, Vegan), and takes parameters like cooking time and number of servings etc. So not only is a Recipe a note that explains how to make it, but it has a template with the boilerplate information pre-filled so when writing down a new Recipe, it's faster, and it has all that metadata, which allows you to construct Sets from the Recipes.
For example, I can have a document called Quick Vegan Crowd-Pleasers that is a Set of all vegan Recipes with cooking time under 30 minutes and 8+ servings. If I really wanted to go psycho mode with it, I could track every ingredient currently in my kitchen and filter recipes by what I can make with what I have on hand.
You can really do a lot with it. It's just time intensive to set up and also to keep up with entering data.
Notion is a note taking app. With a shared note feature. (You are right.)
And then it has a ton of more features, almost too many too mention.
Anything apart from simple unformatted text is (in summary) called a component.
It has a wide variety of components. Some of these components have a level of intelligence to them. Some of these components are references and links to information in other notes. Some of them are intelligent components that selectively show information in other notes. Some of them are intelligent components that selectively show information in other components.
Components can be tables, formatted headers, lists, dynamic content, charts, “views” similar to sql views, etc.
You can think of anytype as a web-site builder. You can create pages (objects), databases, interlink them, create a sidebar. Currently you have only one private space, so it’s more about personal knowledge and productivity. With sharing you can publish a blog, create a community or a private team space. So a site builder with a ux of a note taking (so easy, no skills required)
It sounds like a P2P shared note and document app but it's not clear to me.