Show HN: Everything I Know Wiki
wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz
wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz
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) 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.
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...
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...
I also built a few workflows to retrieve information to both edit and consume my wiki easier.
Before starting this wiki, I already got some experience in organizing and visualizing knowledge in some way with the Learn Anything project.
Which I find true too, modulo obvious conventions like bin/ doc/ public/ etc.
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?
Every once and awhile I'll re-read something that I "should" have retained and internalised (by my own standards) but that hadn't sunk into my long term memory.
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...
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....
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) 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) 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...), Ron Paul (http://shii.bibanon.org/shii.org/knows/Ron_Paul.html), and NAFTA (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.
How does on go on to finding the next shii , telling us what will happen next with such accuracy and insight ?
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.
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.
No. A thousand times no.
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.
I only share information that I find there is no harm in sharing. If someone finds it of use, that’s awesome.
I wrote an article about this mindset shift at some point:
And in my mind this means empowering everyone else around me so they can build even more awesome tools and ideas.
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.
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
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?
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.
I don't think OP is creepy at all, everything in here is normal and very honest.
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.
> 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.
It is difficult to be genuine in this world, at least for me. I am afraid of people's judgements, whether real or imagined. It takes a lot of courage on the part of the OP to put out this sort of work, opening themselves and their beliefs to the scrutiny of anyone who chooses to read it.
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.
Of course you're entitled to those thoughts, but I think it's a good idea to couch them differently or at least to get into the reason why you had that reaction.
I can understand a negative reaction to a project like this. There's some amount of narcissism involved in writing down everything I know and then publishing it. There's also some amount of narcissism involved in writing anything at all and assuming that other people will be interested in it. There's also narcissism in me reacting negatively to your comment and then criticizing your post, as if I have something worthwhile that I want to transmit to you. Yeah, yeah: "All is vanity". But we want people to write things down and share them, right? We want people to communicate, say what they think, and risk being wrong or creepy, right?
My general thoughts are, when criticizing something something like this, err on the side of charity. Negative reactions are fine, but couch them and explain them.
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.
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.
The bleak part is that if you need to simulate attraction to a woman you are missing something very good in your life."
Did you read the same part as I?
" the most important thing in any kind of relationship is honesty. In regards to seduction it is being honest with your intentions."
And the part about eye contact is not about simulating feelings, it is about what to focus for (those who are insecure), if you want to to get in deeper contact.
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.
I'd bet that is not how you really feel.
How are you certain this is universally true? Seems like a pretty clear case of the typical minds fallacy. For people that don't 'naturally' maintain eye contact with women they are attracted to, 'simulating' that behavior does not imply that any feelings are being simulated.
I'm not sure if you're being serious here. Do you really think there don't exist any shy guys at all anywhere that find it hard to talk to attractive women or look them in the eyes? Seriously?
"And I like to approach girls I find attractive in real life (where appropriate) by saying hey and asking for their name."
But I think you're tapping into something deeper, something I was going to respond to in my original comment, but thought better of it because you [edit: they] hadn't actually made the argument at that point. Now you've flirted much more closely with it, so I will say it:
There is a modern suspicion of the entire concept of teaching men how to raise their sexual value. There is a sense that it involves "faking it" somehow, or that it represents an unhealthy obsession, or means the man is only interested in sex. But it's this taboo which permits the distasteful 'PUA' community to flourish - it pushes the practice of self-conscious improvement to the fringes, where taboos are disregarded. It's a dangerous state of affairs when a man's best hope at improving their lot is toxic misogyny. Far better if there's easy access to good, practical advice that works, alongside a healthy worldview.
It's notable that the taboo is only for men - we don't assume a woman "probably just wants to have sex", just because she puts on lipstick (the purpose of which is to simulate attraction!)
(It would be interesting to further explore the sexual politics behind this taboo, and why the corresponding one for women is so much weaker, despite male noises about "preferring girls who don't wear makeup", and in particular how such taboos are powerful weapons in the 'battle of the sexes' that improve the ability to distinguish fitness levels in the opposite sex - but it's a fairly hot can of worms that I'd rather just allude to than attempt to untangle here.)
Putting on makeup doesn't create an illusion of having emotions one doesn't really feel.
Anyway. The precise function of makeup varies, but the specific case of lipstick is, as I already alluded to, designed to subconsciously simulate attraction through the mimicking of flushed lips. That's pretty much exactly the "illusion of having emotions one doesn't really feel" - and far more directly sexual than merely holding eye contact.
Unfortunately, this has resulted in me never having had a relationship, despite being well into my 30s now.
I have close female friends who enjoy my company, so I know I’m not completely repulsive to women. I don’t think I come across as creepy or desperate (I don’t even particularly care about sex). I just never learned the necessary skills for starting a relationship. I wouldn’t know what the early stages even looked like.
The likely future for me, if I don’t change something, is that I never find a partner. I’m not lonely or anything, I’m just worried that I’m missing out on an important part of the human experience. And I’m not sure how to remedy the situation without learning to fake what appears to come naturally to everyone else.
If this is what you risk when sharing on the internet, then maybe highly curated social media and the anxiety that it brings had it right all along.
We need more of this. More weirdness, more real human beings. If you don't like something, move along. Also, you never are the only one.
The "if you don't like it, move along" argument is fine in general and I support it 100%, but in this case a bit strange as posting something to HN is mostly to get responses / views / arguments, not just gushing adoration.
Absolutely. While I do mind your opinion, I don't mind you giving your opinion.
> The "if you don't like it, move along" argument is fine in general
There is actually a lot of issues that I would have people take a firm stance against more often, instead of just letting it slide. This just happens to not be one of them.
I'd be far more likely to call them out on their Minimalism topic, as they clearly are far to the extreme on how much time they focus on documenting their life, which is not a minimalist pursuit.
Still, it is a personal site for a fellow human being, and I've always maintained that if someone if self-aware enough to make specific decisions on who they want to be, and how they want to live, they deserve respect for that.
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
I also use Ulysses on the phone in cases I need to make quick edits. More details here:
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.
What inspired you to do this?
[1] https://www.bfi.org/about-fuller/resources/everything-i-know
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.
This is my friend's wiki which also deserves some attention I think.
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.
Something about the physical action of writing makes me retain information better.
Thanks for sharing.
I figure at some point some subjects can be turned in to articles. Good retirement hobby I imagine.
I’ve been doing the same too https://www.aizatto.com/why-gitbook
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
Demo of it here: https://www.foxhop.net
https://lobste.rs/s/ord0rg/does_anyone_else_keep_their_own_k...
Of course there are other kinds of value than monetary.
And from experience I think it's true that at some point one should move from being a jack of all trades to become a master of some things. But as big as the world has become today, the road to this has become even longer. I think today it's not so unusual anymore to search some years or longer for your calling to master.
For example, if you have dabbled in C++, Java and Python you are better placed to learn a new language than if you have exclusively used one of them. Even if your knowledge of that goes way deeper.