To what extent are digital gardens a personal wiki?
I’d argue that approaching with the idea that a digital garden can compete with encyclopaedias like Wikipedia or Encyclopædia Britannica defeats the purpose of a digital garden, of which is to be a resource that’s tended to and nurtured by you. However, I can’t deny that there’s some overlap in that digital gardens can be a form of knowledge management — holding together ideas and notes that you have in the moment. I’m thinking of an analogy of Post-it notes, where you’d tear out a piece and stick it to a board anytime there’s something you’re curious to follow pops up.
In my head, there needs to be the mindset change of depth over breadth. I currently have the urge to create new notes for just about any new topic I can think of. But if we’re following the ideology of a digital garden — to be something you can care for and nurture over time — I’d argue that it would be careless to create so many notes that will eventually overwhelm you.
So let’s start small with this and see where we shall go. I guess these ideas can be guiding beacons with how I approach this garden:
- Curiosity over procedure — prioritise creating notes only when I have initial thoughts or ideas about a particular topic, instead of merely creating a note because it is a new topic.
- Review constantly and re-link where needed — while I can’t afford to constantly scan through my garden to find links between ideas, where I catch them, I should make it a point to link notes together. It’s here where the ideas organically link.
- Small, atomic changes over large paragraphs — because I’m centred around constant nurturing for the time to come, I shouldn’t overwhelm myself by writing long paragraphs at a time like I would for my blog. Small, digestible changes are the way to go here.
- Start with questions — I found that starting with a leading question for notes helps refine the scope that I’ll go down. While some might argue this limits what a note will cover, I’d argue that it provides a good base to begin exploring from. No questions are fixed — just like how exploration always changes.