Arboretum:About

My Wiki is part of a personal knowledge & creative flow that I have been following since late 2024. It holds the factual and learned details from others with more knowledge than I have. The Arboretum holds the facts, information, quotes, studies, and research notes from my readings and questions that spring from places I visit and people I meet.

I do semi-casual research via the internet, free resources (governments, libraries, archives), and stuff I find in the library database system at the university where I work. It's unstructured and not focused towards a dissertation, book, or other accredited deliverable. I just like learning and this is a good reason to learn how to keep a wiki. (I will admit that keeping a wiki is a professionally relevant skill, too.)

An arboretum is a center dedicated to the cultivation, study, and display of a wide variety of trees, shrubs, and other woody plants. This wiki grew out of the digital garden in March 2026.

How It's Made

I imagine that keeping this wiki will give many benefits. It's something I've wanted to do my whole life, but always had too much imposter syndrome to execute. In the spirit of learning in public, I'll share some of my goals and the process I'm following for those interested.

Goals

Reference list of documentation best practices that I can use and share, including locations where I learned about each topic ("Max's Writing Manual")
A representation of this part of my brain that enjoys thinking, learning, and connecting knowledge and a repository of stuff that serves as a learning journal
Portfolio full of my research, writing, and ideas that I can use a writing artifact (I don't have to remove any proprietary information)

Process

I gather topics from books I've read, movies I'm watching, and other things here and there around life. Any question I have about anything could end up in here. I try to boil it down to a term or concept that can become a single wiki page.

For each topic, I like to dive into the history or context and explore a few interesting things about it. I spend about 6-8 hours reading about things over the week, then maybe 4 hours drafting and polishing a wiki page.

As I write more and grow the site, I am finding myself making connections and wanting to explore similarities. I expect that the wiki will expand and I'll eventually get into refining pages and connecting topics.

AI Statement

To clear the air: I've typed out everything in this wiki. Part of the purpose is to have a place where I can use writing to help synthesize and connect ideas in a more formal arena than the digital garden. Hard to reach that goal if AI is generating the thoughts and writing it for me.