lafe's blog

How do you design something that is not really meant to have a lot of structure? Digital gardens come in a lot of shapes. Some are like crazy warrens of pages and topics that have no overt organization, but flow organically. Some are very hierarchical, categorized, tagged, searchable, and usable.

It seems like a lot of folks equate a digital garden with a personal wiki or "personal knowledge system". That's definitely not what I'm going for here. Or not exactly.

Fortunately for me, none of these concepts are exactly new. And lots of pixels have been shaped into words by people seeking to solve some of the same problems that I'm thinking about now. For all that it was written in 1998, these writings about hypertext gardens are still pretty relevant today.

For now, I think that I am looking for some very basic categorization and hierarchy, but only in the broadest of senses. To address the idea of dark, undiscoverable corners of the garden (assuming I ever write such a thing) a basic (automatically generated?) site map may serve. Perhaps some pages will serve as "hubs" for discoverability of pages around similar topics. And maybe if I get really fancy I'll link to related topics.

I'm a fan of trying things, and seeing if they work. If they don't, I'll try something else. Maintaining inter-linking and back-linking, by hand may end up being fun, or it might be a pain. Fortunately, I can always add a bit more technology if necessary. Or abandon the idea completely.

A digital gardener does seem to have the same basic job description as a Wiki Gardener. But this garden isn't (yet?) so collaborative.