Thread about Roamblogs, prompted by @vgr (thanks to @QiaochuYuan for encouraging me to write it)
Roamblogs: nonlinear public writing and the blog/book distinction
24 tweets · November 2019 · 195 likes · 6 retweets · read on Twitter
@vgr @QiaochuYuan I'm experimenting with writing publicly on roamresearch.com, and its graph features seem to be solving some core challenges: 1. wanting to be able to reference ideas I haven't written a full post about 2. not wanting to post about something before my post is 💯
@vgr @QiaochuYuan ...you can see how those two challenges reinforce each other. Since everything's so intertwingled, this made it really tough to publish anything!
@vgr @QiaochuYuan (EDIT to thread: Apparently twitter refused to let me publish this storm because I've used the phrase "everything is deeply intertwingled" too many times already. Had to edit the phrasing slightly to stop a vague "Whoops, you already said that" error message)
@vgr @QiaochuYuan Anyway, with Roam, I can just mention a new idea using a [[page link]], & get a placeholder page for it. Even before adding content to the page, it already displays every place where that word/phrase is used, giving context for learning more about it:
@vgr @QiaochuYuan I've only done a little bit of this but it's been amazing and I can tell that it's going to make a huge difference to my online writing. I've wanted something like this for years. Here's some thinking from 2 years ago. Ended up making an Airtable and it helped... like 5%.
@vgr @QiaochuYuan In those notes, you'll notice I talk about Tables of Contents and about meaningness.com, which is one of the best examples of a hypertext *book* that I'm aware of. @meaningness made drupal plugins for 🛠️ WIP pages & hover-glossary
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness But meaningness is a nonlinear book. What's a nonlinear blog? What distinguishes a book from a blog?
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness I see the essential difference between blog & book as: a book has a finite breadth & depth, that's somewhat known from the beginning, and thus is organized around a ToC, and can be *finished". Also intended to be internally coherent.
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness By contrast, a blog is an ongoing exploration of whatever captures the writer's interest at a given moment (perhaps with a theme). Any table of contents must be mostly retrospective, since the writer doesn't know what comes next. Later posts may contradict earlier ones.
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness This implies some bloggers who are super organized & have dozens of posts planned out could be considered to already be writing digital books. Then ofc there are blogs converted into books, one example being the conversion of LW Sequences into R:A-Z lesswrong.com/posts/NjFgqv8b…
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness @Meaningness again becomes a helpful example here. The homepage says it's a "work in progress ... hypertext book and a metablog that comments on it" and the book has a table of contents whereas the metablog is simply posts organized by date.
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness One advantage to writing a book is you can assume readers will start @ start, so you can introduce multiple new concepts, then use them to say more. A huge part of the point of a hypertext book is that it affords multiple points of entry, which absolutely necessitates glossaries.
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness At *minimum*, one needs accessible quick reminders of what terms mean. Roam's contextual backlink approach is even more valuable as it means you see not just the definitions but also references to what else you've said ABOUT and WITH those concepts
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness This is critical for allowing writers to write deep thoughts using new concepts without having to re-explain themselves every time, but also not having to manually pull up a reference link for each use of a term... & ofc some people don't even try 😂
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness And we haven't even gotten to some of the more epic features of roam, including the ability to embed-quote nodes or entire subtrees, and to see where a given piece is quoted. This allows for remixing old pieces or drafts, producing meta-commentary, & stuff I haven't even dreamed!
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness Previously the best thing for this was twitter & QTs (and it's still better along some dimensions) See @visakanv's answer to @vgr's original question
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness @visakanv There are challenges though. People find meaningness.com daunting to read because they don't know where to start. In order to ensure I read the whole thing, I chose to just go in ToC order anyway. I guess the main value is being able to publish a half-written book at all.
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness @visakanv So going back to @vgr's original point, @RoamResearch is clearly not built around a core use case of blogging and has barely optimized for it at all... and yet it's already a powerful platform for this. What's possible with a few years of further development?
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness @visakanv @RoamResearch Here's what I'd like to see for roam to make it better for graph-based-blogs: 😍 1. Basic usability stuff: shareable page url with previews, custom header/theme/css, private drafts, commenting (block-level!)
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness @visakanv @RoamResearch 😍 2. Better ways to organize posts to point people to new content & updated-old content. Currently landing page is Daily Notes, which is... sort of appropriate for a blog... but it ends up being mostly blank unless actively updated frequently.
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness @visakanv @RoamResearch 😍 3. Subscribe-related features. One option I would like is to be able to easily export a page as HTML and pipe it straight into wordpress+RSS and into mailchimp, so that I can announce new posts to followers. Could also be more internal.
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness @visakanv @RoamResearch 😍 4. What-I've-Read tracking. This is key for nonlinear reading. Visited-links turning purple is the Web 1.0 version of this, but it doesn't suffice when pages may also be updated. It needs to be both on a page level and on a node level.
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness @visakanv @RoamResearch 😍 5. Inter-roam linking/embedding. I've talked to @Conaw & this is en route but is tough & needs a new data model. 5b. Some extensible standard for doing deep backlinks & embed between completely different *sites*. Revive the blogosphere! Also science 🌎