Not suggesting it though :P
... 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)
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.
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.
> 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.
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 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.
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).
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.
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.
...sometimes. ;-)
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.
“It isn’t for everyone” is absolutely right, and if I can make that separation higher up then it’s better for everyone.
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.
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
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.
It’s hosted on Netlify, so I don’t even have logs. :-)
GDPR compliance is overblown, when the simplest way to be compliant is to "just don't store nor process personal data"
> 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.
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.
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. :)
Website is clear cut and to the point, its gorgeous btw. :-)
Second, have you experienced any of the problems outlined in MetaCrap https://people.well.com/user/doctorow/metacrap.htm
How have I never seen that link?! Yeah the issues described therein sound familiar...
Do I introduce another decimal point? Like so: "1.123.0"
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.
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?
> 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.
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
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
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.
I'm gonna organize my 2TB thumb drive this way tomorrow (I'll at least start) and see how it goes...
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.
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.
Given how the system is setup, I find this amusing in a meta-way.
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.