Zettelkasten vs (Personal) Wiki

Sascha

You are very free to modify the document.

Sascha

I added another column for personal Wiki.

andang76

@Nick said:
The way I differentiate them is that a wiki is focused on providing authoritative knowledge on a subject (e.g. encyclopedia), while a zettelkasten is more focused on developing knowledge, therefore it contains more exploratory information such as open questions/ideas/thoughts.

I think this is the real difference between wiki and zettelkasten
In my system I tend to use both forms, needing to manage both type of contents

chrisaldrich

I can be stupid in my [private] Zettelkasten without anyone noticing.

I too have a private space exactly for this purpose. On the other hand, writing and publishing in public spaces forces me to do some additional thinking/polishing work that I might not otherwise, and that often provides some spectacular results as well as useful feedback for improvement over time.

Edmund

Three years later I came across this thread started by @Vinho in April 2022. And it's still worth reading. My learning so far: Asking a question is a great starting point not only for a discussion, but also for working with a Zettelkasten. In some of our discussions I'm very focused on interesting key terms. In this thread I was interested in hidden structures. And I was able to find some of them. And last but not least I found an open task in the Google docs file to create a GraphViz concept map.

Here is my concept map, which may help you to compare the differences between a Zettelkasten and a Personal Wiki:

Also see: Zettelkasten Systems Model

The hidden structure that I have mentioned is a five steps process to answer questions within your Zettelkasten:

1. Start with a question and create a related permanent note.
2. Link to other notes that might help answer this question.
3. Create a structure note with a table to summarize different aspects of a potential answer on one page.
4. Create a concept map to see all these aspects and their relationships on one page.
5. Summarize the key findings from this concept map as an answer to the open question.

So my own answer to the discussion about card boxes vs. personal wikis is:

A Zettelkasten is a bottom-up system for developing and connecting atomic, self-contained notes to foster deep understanding and idea emergence.
In contrast, a Personal Wiki is a top-down and bottom-up structured system for organizing and retrieving information through linked and hierarchical pages, categories, and dashboards.
While both support personal knowledge management, the Zettelkasten emphasizes thinking through writing, whereas the Personal Wiki emphasizes structured navigation and reference.

Will

You've hit on the ZKM's magnetism. What sets this method apart from others is its processes, purpose & and function.
1. Serendipitous discovery
2. Idea Generation and Exploration
3. Long-term Training
4. Thinking through writing.

Andy

@Edmund: To call a zettelkasten bottom-up and a personal wiki top-down strikes me as idiosyncratic. There's nothing inherently top-town about wikis, which are, historically speaking, just a kind of website, and there's nothing inherently bottom-up about zettelkästen, which are, historically speaking, just a set of cards in a box. You're free to define them as you do, of course, but your definition doesn't capture the more common understanding of them in, e.g. Wikipedia, which doesn't oppose the two terms in that manner.

Your concept map is good enough as far as it goes. In reality there is much more complexity. Zettelkasten was developed in the medium of paper, and wiki was developed in the medium of the World Wide Web. Wikis are therefore "Web native" and zettelkästen are not. But, it's more complex than that. As Paul Butler argued, "All software is Web software now": that is, technical standards developed for the WWW are now found in nearly all software, and certainly in the typical software that most people here use to maintain a zettelkasten. Take Obsidian, for example: as an Electron app, its technical foundation is very much a Web software stack that is profoundly indebted to the history of wikis and similar websites. Anything that you do in a software app like Obsidian is very much like using wiki software, even if you call it a zettelkasten. So, beneath the simple abstraction of your concept map there is a hidden complex technical genealogy.

Edmund

@Andy: To call a zettelkasten bottom-up and a personal wiki top-down strikes me as idiosyncratic.

You are right. That's wrong in my concept map. And I've now updated it with v0.5.

@Andy: So, beneath the simple abstraction of your concept map there is a hidden complex technical genealogy.

Yes, it is. And the complexity is increasing. We see evolution every day. We see changes driven by the tools, by the methodology and by the purpose defined by us. The users of Zettelkasten.

See: https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/22936/#Comment_22936

Zettelkasten is not a fixed method but a mindset and a set of tools that grow with your thinking. The goal is not perfect order but perfect evolution.

With your help, I can now see the need to update the Historical Model.

Edmund

Can a straight line explain the difference between a Zettelkasten and a Personal Wiki?

Yes, it can. But first we need an object-oriented model of personal knowledge management that shows us both the essential relationships between the objects and also their specific attributes.