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Comment by jen729w | Hacker News Reader

Well, this was bound to happen one day. This is my site. I guess I’ll read the comments here then go take a bath with a bottle of gin. :-)

Edit: yep. As suspected.

Let me just say this, if I may:

1. You don’t have to like every idea, but please consider that some people do.

2. I’ve been using this successfully for a decade. I’m using it right now to organise a project. My boss loves me for it, because guess what? We can find things!

3. I’m not alone. I’ve done essentially nothing to promote this yet still I get multiple emails a week from strangers telling me that they love it and asking for guidance.

Okay, carry on. I’ll answer questions here where doing so feels productive.

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It does feel entertaining to read the comments from people who have so obviously never worked for a large (or old) organisation doing an admin related job who think that spotlight or fuzzy search will save them. In a previous job I had to respond to freedom of information requests for a public sector organisation with more than 20,000 employees, which meant deep diving different departments shared drives and shared inboxes. The vast majority had no real structure at all and good luck finding a system that can search dozens of silo'd shared drives for info in .pdf and .doc files with permission systems that have evolved over decades. Discovering that the R&I division (which had several thousand employees on its own) mostly used johnny.decimal on their shared drives and often in their personal spaces was like discovering a tribe of ray gun wielding supermen in the depths of stone age Norfolk. It just makes life easy.

I idealize / fantasize about archiving and organizing work sometimes, not going to lie. I think a lot of people do as well for their own notes, but if they're anything like me, they don't have nearly as much stuff, or they intentionally produce and hoard stuff for the satisfaction, not because they actually need it.

There being new filing / organizing systems and apps (zettelkasten is the new hip thing nowadays it seems) popping up on HN every once in a while isn't helping either.

Tl;dr, I think it's the idealization of organizing, the feeling of productivity, etc that is fueling a lot of people.

Meanwhile I've gone through three or four different note keeping / taking / managing apps and still haven't settled on anything, lol. I also lost the need for it, now that I've gone from the exploratory phase to actually building software.

> good luck finding a system that can search dozens of silo'd shared drives for info in .pdf and .doc files

https://www.google.com/search?q=ediscovery+software

or you know could spend 0 pence on something and just organise your folders

also IIRC Windows Index Server has done this since the late 90s. And you can certainly configure it to index across shared drives.

Not suggesting it though :P

Sometimes unfortunately you have no idea of the keywords to search for...

... or you drown under the ocean of unrelated finds, which is my usual experience with mass-applied windows indexing (in the form of massive corporate sharepoint)

Ediscovery software, and I used a bespoke solution in that job, takes a job that can take weeks or months the and makes it possible to do it in days. Or y'know, you could use a filing system and do it in minutes?

The HN comments always sting a little. My guess is the cynics are the ones who usually comment while people who are more positive will probably be more likely to just upvote? So my recommendation (having had a couple HN-front pagers) would be to be encouraged by the upvotes and the attention, while keeping your skin thick.. But also learning from the criticism what you can improve.

pretty much that, because what am i going to say other than: i like it, i'll go try that now.

if on the other hand i see something that's problematic or could be improved, i should say that, instead of just downvoting.

i think the problem comes from the tone people use to voice their disagreements

I just want to +1 this is a mostly-positive user who mostly upvotes rather than comment. I'm sure there's plenty of us, so don't feel discouraged.

Same here. I like the idea of JD very much - and I've been meaning to reorganize my notes by it, but can't ever get started on it - so there's very little of value I can add to conversation beyond an upvote.

On GP's:

> My guess is the cynics are the ones who usually comment while people who are more positive will probably be more likely to just upvote?

It irks me to see this comment pattern regularly being called out as "HN specific", because it isn't. It's universal in on-line discussions - particularly those on platforms with upvote/reaction buttons. There is nothing interesting in "I like it" comments, so you always get disproportionately more of critical comments ("I don't like it because", "I had a problem with it"), tangents, and low-quality humor. HN is perhaps different than most places in its strong dislike of low-effort jokes - which leaves us with just criticism and tangents. My point thus is: it's not HN, it's the Internet. It's not a mutual admiration society like you get when you go out with friends for a beer. I would think people would've gotten used to it in 2020.

>> My guess is the cynics are the ones who usually comment while people who are more positive will probably be more likely to just upvote?

> It irks me to see this comment pattern regularly being called out as "HN specific"

I've heard this general rule vocalized on social media as "Fans like, haters comment".

If you get loads of upvotes for an idea and a lot of flack, those pushing back is not your audience and can safely be ignored. You are not doing anyone any favors by trying to appease everyone.

Haters also downvote, making the upvotes effectively invisible.

Yeah, downvotes are weird in that way. Comment sections that marks posts and comments with more downvotes than upvotes as "low quality" also seem to encourage "pile-on" behavior.

Really great site! Uncluttered and easy to follow.

I have one question: is there JD best practice on how to handle file sets that are generated frequently and in large-ish numbers? I’m thinking specifically of camera image files. My current approach is to have a directory per year, and then subdirectories (with a YYYMMDD-subject name) for each distinct shoot (typically between 30 and 50) in that year, together containing between 5000 and 20000 new images (depending on how many shoots I do). I maintain a parallel folder structure for the processed images. My current thinking is to keep this photo-library as-is, but put all of my ‘normal’ files into a JD structure.

By the way, and picking up memetherapy’s comment, I’ve also experienced knowledge management problems in large corporations for which JD would be a great answer. The last place I worked moved several years ago from a ‘classic’ system based on servers and file systems to a system based upon numerous per-project sharepoint sites. It didn’t help that the template for the sites was developed from a project lifecycle perspective and had about 70 folders covering every stage from initiating a bid to project shutdown. There was pretty-much a single ‘dev’ folder for the actual work, that techies like myself inevitably populated in inconsistent ways. Something that was never resolved was that all of these silos made searching for old reports, etc really really hard and fundamentally broke knowledge management in the company. Especially when most of the silos had per-project access permissions.

On the point made elsewhere about tagging, in my experience it is extremely hard to get people across a large company to add metadata to content, let alone do it consistently.

> My current thinking is to keep this photo-library as-is, but put all of my ‘normal’ files into a JD structure.

Yes. This sort of data set already sorts itself pretty well: by date. There’s no need to mess with that.

See also: your music library, if you don’t have iTunes do it for you.

> It didn’t help that the template for the sites was developed from a project lifecycle perspective and had about 70 folders covering every stage from initiating a bid to project shutdown.

Aah, when the PMO tries to be helpful. I see this all the time - a ‘baseline’ set of folders that you’re meant to understand know what to do with but literally nobody does so they just get ignored.

Worse, I frequently see them with numbers at the beginning. Worse even, those numbers just make no sense at all. I’ve recently experienced a repeating pattern which involves folders 001-015 being something that I can’t remember, and then `016 TO BE DELETED` (because this is in a document management system where you can’t actually delete a file).

Perhaps you could, rather than taking criticism personally, use these comments as an opportunity to get a broader understanding of how others perceive your work.

I imagine it's a minority view here (well, pretty much everywhere), but I relish getting constructive criticism of my works, whether it's on a site like this or a review by my peers/customers/employers.

That's because I have my own perspective, point of view and view of the world. Others have different ones.

When other folks share their opinions/perspective, it gives me an opportunity to examine my own preconceptions -- which usually winds up giving me a better understanding of the topic at hand.

Granted, in a setting like HN, there will be those who will be uncharitable or dismissive, and those voices can be ignored.

However, those who criticize specific stuff and provide the assumptions/reasoning/thought processes behind those criticisms can provide valuable insight into how you and/or your product/service are perceived outside of your small circle of shared views and assumptions.

I hope the bulk of the comments here are of the latter kind rather than the former, and that you get new perspectives that can drive positive growth for your activities.

Indeed -- and this is why, really, we all want our pet thing to be up here on the front page at some point. Feedback from this audience is truly invaluable...

...sometimes. ;-)

I believe the trick is to remove the emotion from it. It can be very hard to not perceive criticism of the thing as criticism of oneself. Especially if the thing is something we've worked hard at and are proud of.

I use the "feedback bucket" mental trick: all feedback is shit (whether supportive or critical). All the feedback goes in the bucket, where it nourishes the growth of the beautiful roses of customer insight.

The point is to remove the immediacy of the feedback, detach it from the thing (and my feelings about the thing). But still allow it to inform my thinking about the thing. Instead of taking a criticism to heart, I can mentally "put it in the bucket". If it's useful, thoughtful, considered, constructive criticism then it will produce some insight later. If it's just spite, then it'll produce nothing.

I have to say, I use it, thank you for publishing it, and have a nice day

Thanks for your comments here. They made me see that this is meant for a pretty particular context.

My first reaction was creeping horror, because this feels like a solution to a problem people shouldn't have. But now that I read you talking about the situations you've made this for, I get your point: it's a problem people do have, and one that's not going away any time soon.

Just to save future bathub wear and tear, I'd suggest adding a bit to the top of the website to say who this is for. Just a couple sentences telling the story of your archetypal user would do it. You might also say who it probably isn't for, just so we can get to the dogs wearing clothes images sooner.

Good points, thanks, and probably the main thing I’ll take away from this thread.

“It isn’t for everyone” is absolutely right, and if I can make that separation higher up then it’s better for everyone.

Awesome privacy policy!

https://johnnydecimal.com/privacy/

I agree, except for the part where they immediately contradict themselves:

> If you choose to give me your email address, I will treat it with the utmost respect. I’ll never spam you, or give it to anyone else.

> In 2019 I moved from Mailchimp, whose business model started to make me uncomfortable, to Buttondown. It’s run by one guy who I trust to do the right thing.

Are you arguing that using a service provider to send email is "giving email adresses away"? If so, how do you send your email? (I guess you could host your own mail server on-premises, but is that the bar?)

I'm not arguing that, it is literally factually true. He says he won't give it to anyone else, then goes on to list the person he's giving it to.

Looks not valid in terms of GDPR. What are my rights and in which paragraph are those rights stated? How long is data stored? Which log files of my visit arise (just my IP and date of visit? Who hosts that site, if it's not a machine you physically own? Do they store that data? More data, like browser or OS version?) You are usually allowed to use that data for debugging and intrusion detection etc. but you still need to mention it, if that data is collected, even by a third party you hired.

Mate, it’s a website. You come, you read it, you leave. Next you’ll want a GDPR policy for your library book.

If that privacy policy doesn’t make it screamingly obvious that I’m not tracking you in any way then holy moly I don’t know what to do.

You could add a clause: "If your email address contains the string "a3w" it will be immediately forgotten." :)

I think if[1] I ever had a website, and if[2] I had advertising I would choose one advertiser per month, display a static image at the top of each page, and clicking on it would take you to a static page on an advertiser's website. and it would have a privacy policy like your good example

[1] big if

[2] bigger if

There's not much to change there to actually make it "more GDPR-like". It already does what GDPR wants to cause, i.e. you don't gather Personal Data, with the only exception being the email, and given that it's not operating as an organisation it's probably in the clear.

Maaaaaybeee you might want to strip last octet in IP number from logs, but that's pretty much it.

Complex GDPR policies are only necessary when you want to store and process Personal Data.

> Maaaaaybeee you might want to strip last octet in IP number from logs, but that's pretty much it.

It’s hosted on Netlify, so I don’t even have logs. :-)

Then you point to netlify as responsible party and I guess you might be done ;)

GDPR compliance is overblown, when the simplest way to be compliant is to "just don't store nor process personal data"

This is a bit off-topic, but by any chance did you draw inspiration for the design of the site from Butterick's Practical Typography[0]? I _love_ the beautiful simplicity of this page.

[0]: https://practicaltypography.com/

I know the site well! Not consciously, but I guess that’s the sort of look I was going for. Plus, frankly, it’s all I’m capable of! Ha ha.

I’ll say that Tailwind CSS is a godsend for someone like me. Being able to semantically describe what a thing should look like, inline, is miraculous.

Edit: /s/tailscale/tailwind. Tailscale is also amazing.

This system has tremendously impacted my academic research productivity. Thank you.

I had a project I'm working on (which I already knew was going to be contentious) hit the front page a few months ago in a big way. After about 5 minutes I had to block the ID in my browser. It wasn't great.

Thanks for posting. If nothing else the good thing about your system is getting people to think about how to name and nest folders. I quite like one note in that it forces a 2 level heirarchy

I've met your site via your comment on HN about a year ago, on the topic about organizing...something...that I can't remember now.

The idea intrigue me! It's not often you see kind of thing that seems mundane(to general interwebz population) like a system to organizing files and folder. There is some method floating around, but they either too basic or too complex for my need.

That said, back then I give Johnny Decimal a try a bit, but works took toll on me and I eventually give in to my old way of filing things. Maybe it's time to revisited. :)

I really liked your project. It may or may not be useful in my case, but I want to just say that you've put a lot of effort into this and it certainly shows. I have a problem with naming things as well, usually prefer some kind of a systemic way of organizing things. Perhaps, peculiarly I have a fascinationg for how companies name their products! It is similar in a way - organizing information for best possible internal and external communication.

Website is clear cut and to the point, its gorgeous btw. :-)

I see you've already commented on Dewey elsewhere, but was just wondering - are these categories the actual Dewey Decimal System?

Second, have you experienced any of the problems outlined in MetaCrap https://people.well.com/user/doctorow/metacrap.htm

Re: Dewey, no. You make your own category numbers up for each system, every one is different (unless you create a standard, e.g. if you do lots of similar projects).

How have I never seen that link?! Yeah the issues described therein sound familiar...

Thanks for the great site, it's a great reference for new clients when setting up there new file servers etc. I'm currently doing a Zettlekasten (note/idea organisation) which uses a _similar_ principle, I think between this and johnny.decimal you could build a very custom but efficient system. Will have to ponder further :) Cheers

Love this idea, and I want to adopt it for our organisation. Could you advise what you would do in the following situation though? I imagine one folder called "1 Projects" and immediately stumble upon an issue. We have 100's projects, not 10's.

Do I introduce another decimal point? Like so: "1.123.0"

Multiple projects: https://play.johnnydecimal.com/johnny.decimal/projects

My top-priority job as soon as I get time over Xmas is to get (an updated, better) version of this up on the main site. It’s the #1 question I get asked.

Took me a few years to figure this one out but I’ve been running it in anger now for a year and I can say that it works.

Thank you for this! I have been working at the same company for 8+ years, and I have accumulated a lot of stuff over the years. I have trouble finding anything these days. The stuff I /can/ find is because I have multiple copies sprinkled in different directories.

After reading this post, I have started to organize my documents and projects according to the description. I feel like this is going to be helpful not only so that I can find what I'm looking for, but so that I don't have 4 copies of every giant source code repo taking up my disk space.

I do have one question: in the examples, the category shows "40-49 BlahBlah", but the subcategory goes "41 Taxes, 42 Expenses, etc." Is there a reason why X0 is skipped? Is this so you have room for something you might have forgotten?

> In the example we’ve been using, 20-29 was Administration but our first category was 21 Company registration. What happened to 20?

> We reserve these numbers for ‘management & meta’ information about the category. Although I hardly ever use them, it’s rare that I have more than nine categories in an area. I don’t miss the wasted number, but I always appreciate it when I need it.

[0]: https://johnnydecimal.com/concepts/what-about-00-09/

:-)

Also recently I’ve been starting my IDs at `.11`. Same idea — sometimes you really want stuff to always appear ‘at the front’ and this lets you achieve that.

In the project system I’m setting up now, for example, we’re using the PMP methodology [0]. This very neatly divides up in to:

    21 Scope
    22 Schedule
    23 Cost
    ...
    29 Stakeholder

For each of these, you have a [x] Management Plan. They always sit at `2x.01`. Other mandatory artefacts will live in the zeros.

Then I won’t fill up the zeros, I’ll skip straight to .11 in each category for the things that are ‘personal’ to this particular project. I’m expecting that they will not be standard across projects.

[0]: https://www.pmi.org/certifications/project-management-pmp

I just left a job due in large part to terrible knowledge management. This is lovely. Thank you.

I’ve been using John Decimal since reading about on HN several years ago, so for every critic, there are folks happily using it and paying no mind.

Hi, I'm currently reading the site/guide, my question is, how viable is this for organizing personal files? Is this strictly for business only? I'm currently doing a personal files reorg and this hackernews post came in perfect timing.

100%, it’s what I do.

Also on my to-do list: get a few example structures up there. But drop me a mail and I’ll send you my home structure for inspiration. hello <at> the domain.

Hey, thanks for putting it out there. Without ideas, it would be a pretty boring world.

What if you have more than 100 IDs in a folder, and it makes sense to do that?

I'm gonna organize my 2TB thumb drive this way tomorrow (I'll at least start) and see how it goes...

That is a problem that I haven’t solved.

Elsewhere someone suggested going 36-bit. Or hex, or whatever. So after 99 you’d go A0 and so on.

I don’t love that — the neatness gene is making me itch — but it’d work.

I’d say perhaps you’re being too granular if you have 100+ of a thing in a category. I’d love to know what it is, if you want to mail me. All this info adds to the system.

I had a go at this today and was instantly reminded of why all my past organization efforts fell flat on their face: I don't know how to categorize things, and I can't seem to figure it out.

If there is an obvious delineation, I will accept it and use it. If there is a line separating categories and that line is blurry at all, I find it impossible to both confidently choose where it goes and know where I filed it later on. I can know where to put something or I can know where to pull it from. Never both, somehow. (I am as confused by this as you are, but it is true for me.)

So everything winds up in piles, both physically in real life and in my filesystems. The only way I can remember where something is, is to remember what the pile looked like when I placed that thing on the pile. Then I know exactly where it is.

In network file folders I can find something by remembering my own history in that folder and remembering about how many items were there when I created the thing I'm looking for. Then I sort by creation time and I count that many down, and it's usually one or two away from that number, in one direction or the other.

My windows desktop is organized autobiographically as well. I can never remember what I named a folder, but I know exactly where it is on the desktop.

I'm basically a nightmare for anyone that needs a tidy environment. If you clean up my stuff, everything you organized is lost to me forever.

Say I have two businesses. How do I go from here? Do I have to have separate spaces with separate enumeration within each of them? Thank you!

See this comment to save me repeating myself. :-)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25415022

Just wanted to vouch that I was one such emailer last year... and I did indeed get a reply. Thanks again and may God bless you!

> I’ve been using this successfully for a decade.

Given how the system is setup, I find this amusing in a meta-way.

Very similar system to what we have been using for a good 10 times or 15 years. It works quiet well.

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