Sorry – I don’t read Reddit in memory of the late Aaron Swartz. But thanks anyway.
As for links not working for you: ok. I don’t recall your asking about that here, or through tech support. We’ve hardly had a link issue query in years.
@ckreutz I’m as bit lost but what is your question about Tinderbox. If you have issues with Roam not matching Tinderbox’s features why not ask Roam’s developers?
@mwra: This is an Off the Wall forum, that (I thought) encourages users to discuss other tools. @ckreutz was simply sharing his impressions of another tool that complements TB (and perhaps, dare I say, is better suited for them). There is no need to be defensive every time someone mentions Roam.
3 Likes
@AsafKeller What Mark Anderson was asking about, I think, was actual actionable discussion.
I’d ask everyone to keep in mind that we’re all exhausted. It’s a ghastly year. This week was the ACM hypertext conference. I gave a paper on some off-the-wall research. Mark Anderson gave a paper based on his Tinderbox work. We heard lots of interesting papers on hypertext and social media, some of which will have impact on Tinderbox 9. Both of us reviewed papers for the conference, I think; I know I spent a ton of time on that, and I’m currently writing an epic conference review that consumed perhaps 30 hours. Thus far, Roam seems to have ignored the research community, despite their very considerable financial resources.
Tinderbox links not working is just FUD, period. Search being faster in ROAM must be apples to oranges; surely, at minimum ROAM much incur a ping latency for each search?
Some of @ckreutz’s critique is valid. I broke my vow in a moment of weakness and just once visited that reddit forum, and some points made in the forum to which he points are interesting. There’s one violent critique of Tinderbox because it runs on Macs! Can’t do much about that. And it looks outdated! Well, in the catalog of really important things in tools for saving the world, looking fresh is perhaps not the most critical item on my checklist.
But I’m always happy to do some brushing up if there’s something specific that would make things look better.
4 Likes
[Sorry for edits - it’s been a gruelling fortnight. 2+ weeks or all-day Zoom calls is not goo for one’s health. I’ve done websci20, HT20 and ELO20 without a pause whilst doing a day job. I made typos - sorry]
Apologies. My reply was as described by Eastgate, I don’t get the actionable point you’re making. I don’t really understand reddit: I followed the link but there was nothing pertinent in the link.
I also tried the videos but it all was about ‘databases’ so I gave up. One reason I use Tinderbox is don’t not a techie database manager. such stuff leaves me cold.
I don’t subscribe to the ‘don’t make me think approach’. I make a conscious effort not to work with such people. People too lazy to think rarely offer more than recycled trending ideas.
Understanding one’s information/data takes effort, and should do, otherwise there are always Instagram, Facebook or Twitter to make your ‘thoughts’ go viral.
So, as asked, I’ve looked at the Cult of Roam but put me down as a -1 as it has a rather narrow feature set. I’m totally cool if it suits others but it covers only a fraction on Tinderbox’s features some of which some of us use to do our work. not everyone does the same narrow range of task(s) as is described in the concept of the ‘False Consensus Effect’.
I don’t konw where to start on this but it assumes a very narrow style of work. I rarely search on title ($Name in Tinderbox search terms) but rather user attribute values but Roam seems to lack this feature. Fail, for me. My point being that many Tinderbox users do productive work using a workflow other than yours.
Optimising for Roam features seem pointless as there is already Roam and at the same time degrades an amazing app for lots of other users.
So, what is it you want from Tinderbox without wrecking it? Or was the post just an add for the Cult of Roam?
Thanks for your replies and let me try to explain why I made this comparison between Tinderbox and Roam in a different way. I believe my speed argument was not really explaining it well. Not a native English speaker.
First of all I find the cult of roam also exaggerated and that was the reason I created an account on reddit to mention that for example Tinderbox has much more such features as Roam for a long time. But hey it is now the cool kid around school. That’s why I did not believe in it in the first place. 
I have been using Tinderbox for some years now and the mapping has worked exceptional well for me. If I need to work on a complex topic with time these maps help me to understand it from different angles and build something that lasts. But this is not the only way I want to use Tinderbox.
A more important use case to me is building a personal knowledge map like a Wikipedia that constantly evolves with new pieces of external information and thoughts I write down. A bit like the Zettelkasten approach by Luhmann. I tried many different ways to make this work for me in Tinderbox in the last years and it just did not work for me for various reasons:
- The mapping approach becomes too complex and time consuming once I have a range of topics. Alone the linking takes so many clicks. It only works good if you work on a map, but not on multiple parallel maps (topics). To me the map view works only good for one isolated map.
- I tried the outline/chart approach working with aliases and links and was caught in a vertical representation of information. I wanted to have a horizontal representation of notes where I can quickly walk through notes and change on the fly and link and re-link all the time. For example the top left dot to make linking really does not work for me. Ziplinks seem cool and it is the same Roam has but I wonder why they came so late? Isn’t that what hypertext is all about?
I am sure I missed some approaches, but I really tried hard for years. Maybe I have not asked enough. But here comes my major point: I don’t want to figure out long how to use a tool. I want its core functionality work asap. Tinderbox delivered just that for maps, but not for note-taking and long-term research system to me. I am unable to find an intuitive way to build a larger networked knowledge system that allows me to work in an efficient manner.
Marc says I don’t subscribe to the ‘don’t make me think approach’
I wholeheartedly disagree to that point and that is why I shared my experience about Roam.
I experience note-taking and a mental state using Roam that is really creative. My goal is not to be faster, but I don’t want to be disturbed by a tool in my thinking process, because I have to do more clicks that are avoidabe. That flow happens with maps in Tinderbox, but in Roam it a works in knowledge network connecting ideas and thoughts between hundreds of notes. I think and I don’t notice the tool! I can quickly find stuff wherever I am with so little key strokes. That usability is really great and part of the cult.
You can also take a look at the Notion tool to see that these new generation tools of software have a different approach to usability and user-centered design. Of course Tinderbox has more features and more depth, but I thought in the end horizontal network knowledge mapping and hypertext would be its core objective. Roam probably lacks a lot of stuff and is overrated, but I believe they really got an intuitive approach to hypertext and at least to me it opened a new door. Sorry if that did not bring much actionable items, but it is obvious to me that Roam has some some clever stuff build in.
2 Likes
Tinderbox links require one click-drag for nearby links, or two click-drags for links to arbitrary destinations — one to drag the link to the parking space, and later one to drag the link from the parking space to the destination.
One of the things I like about Tinderbox is that it does make me think about my notes. It does that in at least two ways. One, it offers suggested links to other notes in the same document. Some of those suggested links don’t make sense to me, but others do. My point here is that considering the suggestions makes me think “why do these two notes appear to Tinderbox to be linked?”. Sometimes I see new connections, other times I don’t. But thinking about them is valuable. Another way in which Tinderbox makes me think about my notes is in the map view. I can see an expanse of notes some of which are connected. But looking at that expanse with the express intention of finding other connections that may not have occurred to me at the time is always worthwhile for me. I appreciate others may have different intentions, but my aim is generally not to create connections in a “flow” process but rather more thoughtfully. That works for me, but I appreciate YMMV.
1 Like
Roam has also “queries” and some API/programming capabilities available or coming soon (beta). Together with data types / tags, this make it possible to manipulate data as well. Maybe not yet as powerful as TBX programs, but certainly more than enough for most users.
It is also possible to great graphs such as Kanban or more complex ones (https://twitter.com/Conaw/status/1281423537090162690).
I have been, on or off, using Tinderbox since at least 6 or 7 years but its lack of user friendliness always made me stop after a few weeks of intense usage on one specific problem. Too many clics, too much thinking / tweaking to do simple stuff.
Other the years I also tried Personal Brain with a similar end result. Nice concept, exciting to use for a few weeks but then the bugs and limitations were more than the real benefits.
I started playing with Roam last December. After a few weeks I was hooked. Since I am growing my Roam database every day. It’s dead easy to use, simple, fluid, fast and at the same time highly powerful.
My roam database (they call it a “graph”) started with a few simple notes. Slowly some structure emerged. I made some refactoring along the way, when I felt the need. Now I have hundreds of interlinked notes that constitutes a very powerful “system” I am using everyday. I love that Roam is a web app, it integrate well with the rest of my ecosystem which is 99% online.
I happily paid a Roam licence a few weeks ago when the beta period ended. I think the price is correct. 165€ / year for a software I use multiple hours every day, compared to 249$ for the a TDX licence + 89$ for new version upgrade, the cost is very similar. I took a 5 years licences with Roam for 500$ which make it at 100$/year. I always though that paying for a software that really brings me (a lot of) value is fair !
Not sure I should have posted this in the Tinderbox user forum, but I am a Tinderbox user (or at least I tried many times) and that’s my feedbacks…
2 Likes
This discussion is becoming decreasingly productive.
I like Roam, apricots, the Chicago Cubs (though not their owner), Jo Walton, and early Springsteen. None of these has much to do with Tinderbox. If anyone has good ideas for getting more 57th St Serenade into map view, that’d be great!
As to Tinderbox’s user friendliness: if you have some detail you think could be better, we want to hear about it. If you like to take your notes in Roam, Notion, Guide, NoteCards, HyperCard, Notes, Evernote, or on the back of 8x10 glossy photos, that’s great too.
I think even Off The Wall discussion ought to be actionable — at least potentially actionable.
2 Likes
I don’t think this was what you meant by “actionable”, but your mention of 8x10 glossy photos has stimulated me to listen again to “Alice’s Restaurant”:
“…27 8x10 colour glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was”
As to the key point, I appreciate a more free-wheeling “Off the. Wall”, but I don’t want this thread to become another pros and cons discussion. Reddit is already stuffed with Notion v Roam v Obsidian v whatever.
That said, I also think that TB benefits from the flow of new/alternative approaches from elsewhere, as is evident from TB’s persistent evolution.
1 Like
Roam doesn’t seem to have demo mode (I’m not signing up for something I don’t yet know I want to use). I watched a number of the Youtube lessons listed above but there is no explanation of why I might use it and a lot of “you must” and “you’ll need to” which implies a very narrow use style. IOW, great for some, not so great for others. Really what I see is a web-based outliner. Is there a video showing use of a mature real-world Roam database to do a number of disparate tasks, such as we non-Roam-users may see the point in using it? I don’t see a good description of metadata (fields, attributes, call it what you will). The back-end process ‘just’ sorting things out leaves me cold. Any non-trivial intellectual discovery (e.g. emphatically not things like to-do lists (I use paper for that) or planning charts) needs to not constrain the mind. I don’t see that in what I’ve seen described in Roam.
Also a two-fingered typist with arthritic fingers and a somewhat dyslexic, Roam seems very typing centric. Great if you’re a fast typist whose fingers never leave the keypad. But, that isn’t all of humanity. Over-tailoring for one group disadvantages others.
I’m happy if some people love the app. For my 2¢, does it have half the range of (my use of) Tinderbox? On evidence so far, no. Tinderbox simply adopting some of Roam’s concepts, whilst aiding touch-typists would likely make Tinderbox less usable to the wider group of users, especially those who think about their work rather than just enter stuff and the ‘the computer’ decide.
So, 172 posts latter, the take away seems to be that people who like Roam really like Roam. Others may be less convinced. YMMV 
Have there really been 172 posts? Good grief!
With this post 174. I’m not sure what we’ve learned so far!
175 posts is a lot. I’m going to close this and start a new thread, focused on a concrete question raised here.
1 Like