This post marks the beginning of Knowbank as a knowledge sharing system. I look forward to see how this goes on the long term.
"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
- Sir Isaac Newton
So, what is this?
To put it simply, it's a blog that's build to store and document knowledge. Knowbank here stands for Knowledge Bank (wow what a shock :D). When we want to share our experience or knowledge, we pour them into articles on a blog.
What's the motivation behind this?
For much of our early development days, we've struggled a lot due to the lack of information and knowledge we had. And so, we figured it would be ideal for each of us to share our knowledge and experience with each other so that each of us will be better equipped to deal with issues, at least ones that have been dealt with by other members of the team.
Initially, we just shared links and occasionally discussed topics on voice forums like Discord. However, it became clear soon that this was going to be tough in the long run. Links were scattered all over the place and those discussions were not documented so we had no reliable way of recalling that information.
Hence, we decided to make a more structured yet flexible way of documenting and sharing knowledge. AKA Knowbank.
How is it possible?
Knowbank is built using Docusaurus, a framework that's made by Meta with the purpose of building documentation sites, which can also function as a blog. Adding a page to a documentation or an article is as easy as writing Markdown files. If we need more functionality in our documents, Docusaurus also supports MDX.
It even has support for embedding JSX components like this:
<button onClick={() => alert('Hi there!')}>Test this out!</button>
Why a blog?
I figured that by writing, we can express our experiences and knowledge more efficiently as we can go through each article at our own pace and at our own heart's desire. It also encourages us to recall our knowledge to further strengthen the mental connection to it. I also believe that this will also develop the writing skills of every contributor towards this blog.
This format is also less strict and allows the writer to more freely express their ideas and experiences in order to sound more engaging and authentic.
Of course, this doesn't mean that we shouldn't have live sessions for knowledge sharing. This is just a way to share things more quickly and effectively.
To conclude...
Knowbank is a knowledge sharing system that utilizes blog mechanisms to document knowledge in the form of articles. This system hopes to not only share and document knowledge effectively but to also develop the writing and communication skills of our team in pouring ideas, knowledge, and experience.
If you've noticed, at the beginning of this post there was a quote stated by a named physicist regarding the importance of passing and sharing knowledge. I figured it would be fitting if I were to end this post with that same quote.
"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
- Sir Isaac Newton