Discovery is probably the only reason why I still use YouTube. If somebody could make something that provides a non-Google recommendation system with tools to categorize/organize the videos I've watched/want to watch, that'd be great. Assuming the UI is at least on par with Google's, I'd switch in a heartbeat. Not that their UI is particularly good, but the alternatives I've seen (like PeerTube) are frustrating to use on a basic moment-to-moment level.
The tricky part is getting enough adoption for network effects to make it generally useful. So you need it to be useful to individual users before it has lots of users. Sort of like how Goodreads is useful for keeping track of books you've read/want to read, even if you never read the reviews or look at the lists that are a result of network effects.
The question is what features of a video aggregator would be useful to the individual? Watched list? Playlist management? URL shortening for sharing videos? Better UI? Export list to youtube-dl?
I feel that at some point you need to be chunking flashcards in a way that reflects your evolving level of competency. This is an extra amount of effort and this is something I'm not sure I've seen any research or even much discussion about, so I don't know how effective it might be or whether it's worth the extra time. That said, after surveying all the blog posts, research and articles I could find, I don't think it's something that's really been explored for flashcards. A certain set of static rules have solidified to which most people adhere and they seem diametrically opposed to the idea of building a lattice of deeper, conceptual knowledge. Do flashcards really need to be simple and atomic? Do they need to be answerable in a second or two? Do they need to be easily parsed so they can be instantly answered? I think there's a lot of dogma there that needs to be reconsidered.
I've seen some interesting approaches around flashcards for mathematical concepts applied to sets of mathematical problems. I've experimented with the idea where a flashcard might ask me about algorithms in a way that challenges me to apply a specific algorithm to solve a problem or think about its properties and how they affect where/when they should be used, and I feel it's more useful then your average "vocab"-like flashcard.
If you google around, you'll find many descriptions of knowledge domains where flashcards either don't work or aren't efficient.
My layman's take is that flashcards are based on the idea of forcing retrieval through a trigger. It seems to me that atomicity is an inherent assumption, as well as independence, and that each flashcard maps to a finite set of deterministic answers. Feelings or a sense of things aren't as easily encoded. Tabular/graph relationships aren't as easily encoded either, and likewise sequences of decision trees aren't easily encoded. One can presumably design a chained sequence of cards complete with decision trees, but at this point flashcards end up being an unwieldy paradigm.
Fortunately one doesn't need limit oneself to flashcards. There are other methods like the method of loci etc. that work great for say, sequenced knowledge, like speeches or lyrics to a song, areas in which flashcards aren't the most natural fit.
To me however, memory is but one tool out of many for understanding something. I personally tend not to focus on memory itself too much. For the kind of stuff I'm interested in, memory is an outcome actually doing stuff, getting thing wrong, and then internalizing. In language learning, the memory that comes from embarrassment from making faux pas is both more quickly assimilated and retained longer than via SRS. I still remember mistakes made years ago even though they only happened once or twice.
It's weird. They've obviously written a bunch, but there's no clear "this is what this is and what we want it to be and this is where we're going". It's all very ... academic and "meta" in a very vague way.
I'm fairly disappointed with Obsidian so far. While the basic functionality of linking/backlinking works fine, there are too many restrictions in how it works or how I can interact with it to make it anything more than a toy to experiment with. I disagree with your statement that it's "complete", since I consider it quite barebones. It doesn't help that there still isn't an API for me to build the features I need and they're unwilling to open source it.
Hey, I had exactly the same frustration. I like some features of Obsidian (like backlinks), and I like some features of Typora (like math), but no single editor has all the features I want. It annoyed me to no end that I couldn't simply download the source and make the changes I needed. (or write a plugin)
During quarantine I've been working on an open-source alternative called Noteworthy (https://noteworthy.ink/). It's not quite ready for release yet, but keep an eye out the next few months! The source is here, you can technically build it if you try hard enough: (https://github.com/benrbray/noteworthy)
The goal is to be as modular and extensible as possible. People shouldn't have to keep re-inventing file trees, Markdown parsing, etc.. This is my first large TypeScript/Electron project so code feedback is always welcome, especially in the early stages.
In the meantime, you might be interested in Zettlr, an open-source editor with similar features which is a bit more stable.
If you don't mind me asking, what features in particular are you looking for in an editor?
You should check out logseq.com! Has all the features you’ve mentioned (KaTeX, beautiful and functional graph). I’ve been using it for hours each day and it’s been amazing, ze mind is so free! Their extensions platform is coming this month though, so it’s not quite out yet.
Oh wow looks great, I'll keep an eye on it as it becomes more stable! Love that it syncs .md files to GitHub. It's also nice to see it using datalog queries, I've been considering that as well for my own app.
