appendix
IMPORTANT NOTE REGARDING LINKS:
Links without any symbol beside them are the regular contextual links that you should use to navigate the garden. Links with a small arrow to the right of them are external links which bring you to my sources.
slop-ification quote
…the saddest part is that slop often looks “good enough” at a glance. That’s why it spreads. It’s tidy. It’s formatted. It’s readable. It’s also disposable, and it trains readers to treat the internet like a landfill they have to dig through to find anything real.
Originally, I really wanted to include this quote within my slopification node. The writer’s ‘landfill’ metaphor was quite powerful to me and sparked my initial research into the attention economy. In the end I had two reasons not to include it in the actual node, because the source isn’t necessarily credible (SEO/marketing blog), and since it was eating up too much of my word count. I wanted to put it in the appendix as I still found the quote quite powerful with setting the scene, and for it’s influence on the direction of my research (skimming, attention economy etc).
how-to
I wanted to add a small how-to section for people interested in digital gardening. The site setup itself is quite easy! getting used to the contextual linking of notes is the challenging bit.
tools
obsidian - note-taking application; markdown editor
In my personal opinion, obsidian has always seemed like the best tool for the job. There are various other markdown editors you could use, but obsidian has the most user friendly interface, and more importantly, is not stored on the cloud meaning you own all your files. The possibilities with obsidian are endless, but it does have a caveat. One thing i’ve noticed with myself is this constant need to ‘overoptimize’, which I think is partly due to the vast library of community made plugins that are available. People tend to say you need plugins to use obsidian but really, a simple setup is still easier to get the hang of.
Even sites like Notion could be used for a digital garden, but I find it sort of defeats the purpose of it. The benefit of having these files locally is the fact that you can really edit them anywhere. Using obsidian and quartz, you can effectively make a useable website that you can host for free with a service like github pages.
quartz 4
Other than quartz there are a number of static-site generators that are useable with markdown files, but quartz is the only one i’ve tried so-far. Other alternatives include: Hugo, Jekyll and Obsidian Publish (by obsidian themselves, but this is a paid option whereas others are free).
I personally find quartz 4 works the best for me, there is a short guide on how to get started with generating your site! other than that all you really need to do is find a way to host it.
Anyways thats all I could think of for now, if you are curious about making your own and need help, feel free to ask! :)
digital garden inspiration
https://jzhao.xyz/ https://ewan.my/ https://eidoli.ca/ https://codingwithsphere.com/ https://y9san9.me/