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๐Ÿ‘‹ Welcome to Luke's Wiki!

I'm ลukasz and this is my personal wiki. I use it to take notes and catalog stuff I know, want to know, find interesting or just care about in general.

Think of it as my note-taking app, digital brain or a collection of ideas at various stages of development.

I maintain it in the open because various stuff I've learnt in my life was once openly available for everyone to learn, or somebody was kind enough to spend time and teach me - and now I benefit from knowing it. I want to keep this circle going.

How to use this wiki?โ€‹

  • Choose one of the sections from the menu
  • Use the search function - available in the top right corner or on a dedicated page

Purpose of this wikiโ€‹

I use this wiki to:

  • catalog the known knowns - I share what I know and I can pass to others. I note down valuable resources helpful for deep diving into the topics
  • catalog the known unknowns - I share incomplete and underdeveloped notes on stuff that picked my interest with the intention to learn more over time
  • catalog the unknown knowns - I try to get back to the fundamentals of what I know
  • immortalize various historical tidbits about me, my life and other things as I saw them
  • share personal opinions and beliefs on topics that leave room for personal tastes, discussion or speculation. None of my beliefs are set in stone but I cannot expect meaningful evolution of my opinions if I don't know what exactly I stand for
  • effectively replace my browser's bookmark bar and note-taking app - both of which I find ineffective at what I want to achieve with them
  • spark other people's curiosity about stuff I'm curious about
  • answer questions about what I know to people who are interested in knowing what I know
  • put online what cannot fit into my blog, which is more focused on narratives than collecting and organizing underprocessed notes
  • challenge the idea that the modern web has to be inevitably 'corporate' in order to exist. I use this wiki to acknowledge and demonstrate IndieWeb and POSSE are valid ways of thinking about content ownership on the web

What this wiki is NOTโ€‹

  • it's not a rewrite of Wikipedia. I put notes only if they make it into my conscious memory and (or) I intuitively feel they may present value to me, now or in the future. If I don't need it or don't remember it, it won't make it here
  • it's not a catalog of links (though I do use it for link hoarding). I can't avoid linking to external resources, but this wiki's ultimate goal is to thrive on its own even if all external hyperlinks break. Excluding a few sections that are somewhat messy on purpose, I try to be selective about what and how I link to stuff
  • it's not a scientific project. Biases, errors and bugs are staring at you from all sides as you flip through the pages of this wiki. And you know what? I'm at peace with that. It's better to be alive and evolving than dead correct.
  • it's not an encyclopedia. I filter knowledge through the set of my own opinions and I'm sometimes heavily political. And I'm okay if you disagree with me.

Inspirationโ€‹

I started this project in February 2023 after searching for irrelevant information on some technical topic, and stumbling upon Nikita Voloboev's personal wiki. I've been familiar with the idea of personal wikis for a long time, but it was the first moment when it 'clicked' in my head. I was enamored with the idea and impressed with Nikita's wiki having amassed 1000+ notes on assorted topics. I suddenly realized this may be a good solution to my ever-lasting problem of hoarding knowledge from all over the web and letting it rot.

For a while, I saw the power and significance of what I, due to lack of a better term, call mega-homepages, like the ones run by Ken Rockwell or Richard Stallman. I view them as a specific type of personal website, very heavily focused on content, with vast specialized knowledge bases, and still retaining a lot of personality of its author. That form wasn't something I could effectively replicate myself, but this wiki gets quite close to it.

Another inspiration was the idea of digital gardens. I discovered this for the first time on Simon Dann's website. While I'm still in the process of learning and understanding what exactly this idea means, it deeply resonates with how I think of the process of learning, organizing stuff and developing ideas.

This wiki is part of my early-2023 shift in thinking about what I want to do: I decided I no longer needed to build more new things that would require maintenance. But I'd love to spark people's curiosity, encourage them to grow, learn and explore, so that others start building new things.