Knowledge Base Tooling - Request for proposals!

đź’¬ General
10

Notion Knowledge Base Proposal

Platform / tool overview

Notion is an application that provides components such as notes, databases, kanban boards, wikis, calendars and reminders.

Users can connect these components to create their own systems for knowledge management, note taking, data management, project management, among others.

Main differentiations:

  • Easy to get started and start writing content that’s more curated for users
  • Externally friendly UI that’s customizable
  • Database (Table) is very flexible, has customizable views, filters, and sort functions, and supports formulas, relationships to other databases, etc
  • Database items can be turned into pages and support additional content
  • Real-time collaboration
  • Free to start (pricing below)

Challenges:

  • API is still in Beta
  • Limitations to UI / Design
  • Limitations to views on database
  • Lack of native forms (need to use a third-party service to achieve forms, but TypeForm seems like a very good integration)
  • Lack of automation / integrations (but will be expanded soon as API is in Beta)

Interesting Ideas:

TL;DR:

  • Notion is very good at creating a Version 1.0 of a Knowledge Base.
  • Notion’s pages act as a good way of creating customizable views with mixed content (e.g. commentary by the DAO, curated content, etc.).
  • Since it’s very user friendly and supports a very flexible database system, it’s easy to build an external facing Knowledge Base.
  • It will be challenging to build custom integrations and create our own views outside of Notion with our own capabilities (e.g. Wallet authentication, etc.)

Example created:

  • Example of D_D Knowledge Base on Notion
  • Resources table is shown with some properties listed as an example.
    • Author is a soft reference to “People”, but actual relations can be used.
    • Views can be created with specific filters / sorts
  • Pages can be created however you like and can have specific views of databases (which might help with curation). See “Learn about Web3” in the Beginners section

Examples in the wild

Extremely large set of templates available from Notion here:
https://www.notion.so/Notion-Template-Gallery-181e961aeb5c4ee6915307c0dfd5156d

Notion’s own Help / Support / Documentation:
https://www.notion.so/Help-Support-Documentation-e040febf70a94950b8620e6f00005004

Examples using super.so for theming:

Architecture

Example: Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.

Notion would be a collection of:

  • Pages
  • Databases (Tables)

Pages would be created as the primary “view” for everything in the Knowledge Base. Pages would be created for the following purposes:

  • Landing Pages
  • Sections per skill level (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced)
  • Sections per technology (Ethereum, Solana, Polkadot, Polygon, etc)
  • Sections per content medium (Video, Articles, Interactive Games / Tutorials, etc.)
  • Marketing pages to boost DAO member content
  • FAQs

Databases would be created for the following:
(Stole this from @kempsterrrr but it makes total sense)

  • Resources
  • People (Content Creators, etc.)
  • Glossary
  • Contributor
  • Frequently Asked Questions

To surface a subset of the database into a user-friendly view, a specific filtered view can be created on any page.

  • Example: “Learn about Web3” Page can reference all resources containing the tag “Beginner” and “Conceptual”

Forms would be used on top for members of the DAO to add new content (publicly available, so they do not need Notion accounts)

Onboarding process

  1. Initial Setup
  • DAO Core Team sets up KB in Notion
  • KB Team sets up KB overall structure, pages, databases, permissions
  • KB Team sets up form tool (3rd party)
  1. Contribution
  • Members of the DAO can add new resources to the form tool
  • Members of the DAO can propose changes via comments on each page

Requirements (i.e. how does the tool handle the requirements above)

Flexible properties so that we can add filters / sorts

  • Available

Performant at scale, even with thousands of database entries

  • No limit on databases
  • Some mentions of slow down on large databases
  • Database limits on view (25, 50, or 100 at a time)
  • Searching is generally slow, because it searches pages and other content

External / Public API so that we can build a front-end on top of it, for curation / other reasons

  • Public API is in Beta
  • (Have not researched how easy this is to work with)

View manipulation or output to GitHub repo

  • Currently none supported

Export in case we need to switch platforms

  • Export to CSV

Form input so that we can encourage better collaboration and potentially add process (reviews, contribution rewards, etc.)

Integration into contribution platform (TBD pending formalization of contribution mechanism - tokens, etc.)

  • TBD

Other notes

Pricing

  • https://www.notion.so/pricing
  • Free tier available
    • Unlimited blocks
    • Access to API (Beta)
  • Will likely need to upgrade to $8/seat/month for team collaboration / unlimited team members
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