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For Serious Research: Cadillac of "ClipBoard Managers" vs. "Info/Data Manager"

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TaoPhoenix:
TaoPhoenix, I haven't even gotten to the 'nested' subfolders yet.  Just a single folder jammed with an assortment of snippets.
-nkormanik (February 13, 2014, 09:14 PM)
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Sure. One key part of my recommendation is about the initial setup. I'm not sure about graphics/media exhibits, but for text files, esp if you know any 30 of them belong in one folder, another 40 in another, it's pretty fast to drag-drop them in Windows, then MyInfo does a decent job importing the whole structure and text notes to get going!

dr_andus:
Tomos, would you please share how outlines seem limiting?  Outlines are what I've been thinking of doing.  If there is some other approach I'd love to learn about it.
-nkormanik (February 13, 2014, 09:14 PM)
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Outlines (hierarchical tree-based organisation) is fine for relatively small number of items or if it's mostly for long-term static storage.

However, if you want to work with a text database on an on-going basis dynamically (e.g. by constantly analysing, re-organising and synthesising it, such as to write a number of articles, books etc. over a lifetime), then the hierarchical tree can become an obstacle to developing new understandings of the material. E.g. it requires you to decide up-front how many hierarchies up or down an item should reside, which later may prevent you from seeing connections between that item and another related item at some other deep location in the tree at a faraway branch. One benefit of personal wikis is that they allow you to link items directly in a number of different ways, and they also tend to discourage you from organising your material hierarchically as a tree.

Another way to think about tree-like organisation is that an item e.g. at level 7 in a hierarchy is actually in a box within 6 other boxes. If you were to do this with paper and real boxes, it would be a real pain to locate such material and relate it to other similar material. Of course in a computer we also have labels and categories these days, as well as search, but even then a hierarchical system trains you to think in a particular way that may not always be the most fruitful for creating new knowledge.

P.S. Outlines are very useful for organising the output (writing up an article), but not necessarily for organising hundreds or thousands of text items.

TaoPhoenix:
Tomos, would you please share how outlines seem limiting?  Outlines are what I've been thinking of doing.  If there is some other approach I'd love to learn about it.
-nkormanik (February 13, 2014, 09:14 PM)
--- End quote ---

Outlines (hierarchical tree-based organisation) is fine for relatively small number of items or if it's mostly for long-term static storage.

However, if you want to work with a text database on an on-going basis dynamically (e.g. by constantly analysing, re-organising and synthesizing it, such as to write a number of articles, books etc. over a lifetime), then the hierarchical tree can become an obstacle to developing new understandings of the material. E.g. it requires you to decide up-front how many hierarchies up or down an item should reside, which later may prevent you from seeing connections between that item and another related item at some other deep location in the tree at a faraway branch. ...

Another way to think about tree-like organization is that an item e.g. at level 7 in a hierarchy is actually in a box within 6 other boxes. If you were to do this with paper and real boxes, it would be a real pain to locate such material and relate it to other similar material. Of course in a computer we also have labels and categories these days, as well as search, but even then a hierarchical system trains you to think in a particular way that may not always be the most fruitful for creating new knowledge.

P.S. Outlines are very useful for organising the output (writing up an article), but not necessarily for organising hundreds or thousands of text items.
-dr_andus (February 15, 2014, 05:48 AM)
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I think I slightly disagree. These topics were in my criteria when I went looking for my own solution. Many of the tree programs allow you to move the text structures around. So yes, you do decide *the first time* how you want to think about data, including our case opener Nick K "Not at all". But then if you don't like what tree level something landed in, just move it! Deeper, Shallower, or even "Clone" it!

I find that when organizing big data, once you get past pure "anything with anything brainstorming", there are only a fairly small number of coherent ways to organize the data.

The next feature of programs like MyInfo is that they let you expand and contract the outline like an accordion. So let's say you're working on medical material for topics related to the Dopamine transmitter. You can spend your week on your new 50 entries going all into Parkinsons, Elder Care, Tremors, and even the movie Awakening. Then the following week when you care more about caffeine and Energy Drinks, you just shrink the entire Dopamine subtree into "its box" and let it sit there.

So to find anything is one of two ways:
A. If you know where it is: "Shrink All Nodes", then expand your way right to your topic, maybe with a couple of mis-steps.
B. If you forgot or are just being holistic, you can "Expand All" and then search.

I'd say that with these and a couple more tricks, an outline can easily handle up to 10,000 items with a little forethought.

So Shrink All then 5 clicks expands right to any data element that you recall, or Expand All and Search gets you the 15 occurrences of something.

tomos:
Thanks dr_andus for answering that question.
@Tao, I think it can also depend on the topics. I dont write but I do tend to gather info -- topics which overlap and merge one into one other. Tbh a lot of it I havent orgnaised, and yeah, in a good organiser you can give an item/entry multiple parents ("clone") and tag it. Tagging can end up like another outline with decisions as to where I put this tag in the hierarchy (if it has a hierarchy - if not could be a pain too if there's a lot of tags).
Ease of linking to other items is very important I think. Hence my interest in the wiki suggested by dr_andus.

TaoPhoenix:
Thanks dr_andus for answering that question.
@Tao, I think it can also depend on the topics. I dont write but I do tend to gather info -- topics which overlap and merge one into one other. Tbh a lot of it I havent orgnaised, and yeah, in a good organiser you can give an item/entry multiple parents ("clone") and tag it. Tagging can end up like another outline with decisions as to where I put this tag in the hierarchy (if it has a hierarchy - if not could be a pain too if there's a lot of tags).
Ease of linking to other items is very important I think. Hence my interest in the wiki suggested by dr_andus.
-tomos (February 15, 2014, 11:42 AM)
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Sure, and I'm believing more that how one's mind works is crucial. Given the same set of info, for example I heavily think in trees in every corner of my life. So certain facts can float a little into being parents of two trees, but then all the subsidiary info tends to be unique. I think I have found that for many of my projects the "flatness" of a Wiki works against me, because I take pains to try to avoid scrambling different levels of a tree branch.

So a really good example is I might have a little trouble working on a tree about "Dopamine, Norepinephrine, ADD, and Parkinsons" because I would get confused whether it's "Neurotransmitter Oriented" or "Diagnosed Condition oriented".

But below that the tree gets pretty simple - "Dopamine, Parkinsons, Media, Awakenings, Robin Williams". But if I drifted into brainstorming about "Medical Movies", sure the Awakenings node gets copied over, but then the entire rest of the branch drops and it's time to spin off a new node! Yay!

But if stuff is so blended, then maybe I'd just leave it "flat level" and let it all just sit there like idea soup Like Nick K has it now. But I like structure.
:)

I also have a theory about "human assisted partial AI". Conversation is like building a tree structure. We talk in trees, going up and down branches. Use the human as a "pre-processor" to get past the raw basic coherence problems that usually sink AI, and then let the machine start diagramming out the chat. : ) More on that topic elsewhere !

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