Published on
There are so many ways to communicate on the internet. I have internal problems with deciding which format is right. If I’m brainstorming ideas on my own, I’ll use a scratch text file or a piece of paper. This is very transient. With someone else online, I might use Instant Messaging, but then the information is hard to find later. A Forum lets us organise information by topic as it happens, but requires an upfront decision on whether to create a new forum post or add to an existing one. A Blog lets us write something down but then it’s attached to a person and is hard to update. A wiki solves this but loses the realtime/communication aspect. C2’s “ThreadMode” sort of works for this. You add a paragraph and tag it with your name. This sort of thing might notify everyone, and is not realtime. Asana does allow for collaborative editing but this is not really the same as IM. The benefit of wiki is that once a chat has happened, you can go over it afterward and “refactor” into a format with more longevity. You can also maintain this over time.
I want something that is all of these things. Confluence sucks, primarily because it’s made by Atlassian, but also because it is overengineered (because it’s made by Atlassian). Why can’t we have a wiki where you can have realtime chats with people and then convert the chat into structured information? AI bots would be good at this. I’d also want permalinks everywhere, immutable change history, attaching messages to changelogs, etc. This does seem like a kitchen-sink solution but there’s going to be a nugget in there.
Another thing that gets confusing is that sometimes I have a todo list and I want to gradually replace that list with a well-structured document of outcomes.