Re: A Taxonomy for Knowledge Management

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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 2268

Posted by srdiamond15
2004-10-16 14:43:35

Where does ADM 3 fall in this scheme. By intent, it covers the full spectrum from 1 to 5, or at least 1 to 4. What compromises does its expansiveness impose? The outliner as such as good, but not as good as BrainStorm or even NoteMap. NoteMap, for example, gives you numerous ways to accomplish any operation; ADM provides fewer. To do otherwise would crowd the interface and reduce its usefulness.

Some would question the usefulness of powerful outlining features in a product that aims mainly mainly at level 4. But they are no doubt useful in a database, since you might discover and altogether better classification scheme for your data. There is also a definite efficiency in doing your brainstorming in the same application as your data collection, even versus an interoperable program. But are these efficiencies enough to overcome the loss of features in each category entailed in a high-concept application (as I think Alexander dubbed ADM)? Does it overcome the problems such universality poses, such as not paying enough attention during development to functions essential for one or another of (my) levels, resulting in not including a powerful undo functionality, which is essential to an outliner and is appropriately very powerful in both BrainStorm and NoteMap?

I can’t answer this except by awaiting the further development of ADM. One basic design choice, however, decidedly emphasizes the tree database character of ADM, and that’s the multiplication of views based primarily on the number of panels and their position. Most tree databases over two panels, but some offer three. ADM offers everything from 1 1/2 to 3. This refinement increases the usefulness of ADM as a tree database, but it doesn’t preserve a proportion about the various levels of functionality (1 through 4 or 1 through 5). This isn’t a ground level decision I would have made to increase the power of an outliner.

Stephen R. Diamond

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