Evernote Needs To Be A Wiki

Why does EverNote Need To Be A Wiki? See Why Use A Wiki For Your Notebook.

Can we get it closer to a WikiEngine?

Looking at tags (WikiWord As Tag):

  • cf Michael Hyatt's extreme use of tags in EverNote.
  • figure out how tags work; do tags auto-link? are tags inline?
    • tags appear in ribbon at top of note-window/pane
    • there is no way to trigger creation of a tag with an inline hash or anything
  • create a few entries by hand - have some with same tag(s), plus a page with that tag as a name; do some queries on tag
    • list of all tags appears in left pane, with count of matching-notes next to each
    • clicking on a tag does query on it
      • it doesn't do full-text search, and it doesn't even do note-title search! So only catches explicit tag-assignments.
    • on the other hand, do a regular search on a tag-name finds notes matching any of
      • note title
      • note body
      • note tag value

So this needs to change! (And they should hire me as Product Manager to make it happen!)

Note how MohioMap takes the tags you do use to generate something like the WikiGraph Browser.

Perhaps auto-tagging can help?

  • May'2013: Type Ahead involves text analyis: The first part of Type Ahead Search begins well before the user types characters in a search box. Every time a note is created, modified, or deleted, we generate a list of potential suggestions from the note’s title, tags, and content, which are then serialized and saved to an inverted index.
  • Apr'2014: Descriptive Search tries to turn Natural Language queries into queries enhanced for Semi Structured Data: Realizing that search needs to evolve from keywords, Descriptive Search was our attempt to create a natural extension of your thought process... It is often the case where the meaning of a search can be ambiguous when seen only one word at a time... What we have at the heart of this system is a Semantic Grammar that is very carefully handcrafted to meet the specifications of the particular user language, such as English... The Suggestion Creation step formats the search grammar result into an an equivalent descriptive phrase in your language making the suggestions conversational and easy to read.
  • May'2014: With the AI team now forming its own vertical at Evernote, the startup hired a bunch of designers and QA professionals too... “Moving further I believe that we will build experiences that can be consumed on a smart watch and as the user enters a room, the television should carry forward the same experience building on your mental abilities. I would love to build products with connected intelligence that would take out a lot of manual work from a user’s life.” (cf Intelligent Software Assistant)
  • Some simple analysis like "most commonly used words" and "most common phrases" could be used to trigger auto-tagging or saved-searches.
  • And visual tools like MohioMap might provide a way to get the user's FeedBack into the process - reviewing auto-generated tags and dropping certain items, manually adding others, etc. (Wiki Gardening)

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