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Date Written: 7/20/11 Last Updated: 7/21/11

This article may take a while to write.  I barely know how to begin except with the realization of how important documentation is.


In this age of the internet and data collection of all things knowable and documentable it quickly becomes astounding how much information there is to wade through and intimidating as well, which could lead a person to despair at even trying.  Knowledge is power and people who have it are able to persuade and corrupt those without it.  Knowledge enables a person to defend their morals and beliefs.  Knowledge really only helps people to defend their world views, which are invariably already corrupt.  Having this knowledge gives one the potential to persuade those with less of it or those who are easily swayed.


So where and how does one go about sifting through that which is worthwhile to learn and that which is to be discarded?  The first thing to do is to start.  The second is to write down what you learn, because otherwise you will forget.  Writing stuff down takes time and practice.  Write down that which is important so that you can use what you have written down to locate the information at a later date more quickly.  One of the most important things I have worked on with this site is organizing that which I have written down so that even if I write down a great deal of information or articles I can easily locate it again in the future.  That is what MySQL is excellent at for those who care to look more into this area of sorting information.

As I go through information I continually look at the data to reevaluate it to see if it is still worthwhile and delete, correct, and revise the items as needed.  Items to be deleted are those that have been deemed to have no value and amount to nothing more than clutter.  These items if kept would actually decrease the value of the worthwhile notes.  

Items that are revised are those where missing information is added.  Items to be corrected are those where I go back to a fact and look at it again to see if it is still true.  It is important to do this periodically because people make mistakes.  It may take many reviews before an error is found.  Since facts are the foundation of all that follows it is important to use a great deal of caution with facts.  Use you best judgment to determine how often to browse through old documents and which ones.  At present I do this to an almost casual degree until I discover that which needs the most attention.

Collect worthwhile sites and check them periodically to see if they are still active.  Try to keep back up sites in case valuable ones expire for various reasons; maybe the location changes or maybe the owner dies without changing ownership or possibly the owner just wants to get rid of the valuable site.  These things happen fairly regularly.

Use consistency in format and style.  For example, if you are going to use a tag for something don't use a synonym for another article that means the same thing.  This helps to avoid confusion and makes finding what you are looking for easier.  Be concise.  In other words use as few words as necessary in order to avoid wasting the reader's time.  Don't use leet speak.  Leet speak is using abbreviations for everything.  It is not easy to understand and is really just laziness.  Use descriptive titles and subtitles.  For particularly long articles consider dividing it into multiple articles or add a navigational table of contents at the top of the article.  Avoid slang and write professionally.  This alone will add credibility to your document.

It should be noted that while documentation is a great way to keep track of information it also can facilitate lazy learning.  When information is easy to locate the need for memorizing information decreases and thus you may find that you can not readily remember facts as easily as you once were able to.  

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