Comment by catapart

"Knowledgebase apps" try to reconcile the fact that people (most people? all people?) think in sporadic and unstructured ways with the fact that maintaining data is mostly about codifying it into a structure.

So, instead of forcing a person to think "which app do I need to start getting some ideas sketched out", the app wants people to use it and then do whatever makes sense to them as a means of dumping all of the disparate knowledge into a bag so that it can be recalled, even if unstructured, later.

In an idealized example: if a writer got an idea, they would whip open the knowledgebase app and then...

- they might begin writing a list of characters and start detailing their relationships.

- they might upload a few photos of their local environment for remembering setting details, later.

- they might open a 'canvas' and put together a rough drawing of a new spaceship design they're mulling over.

- they might start working out the economy of their world by drafting an accounting table and assigning the trade networks.

The idea being that if any one of those tasks leads to any of the others (an inevitability), it's nice to just be able to scroll down the page and start on the new data without having to think "okay, which app do should I put this in"?

So, overall, it's about velocity of data recording. Some people just don't work that fast, or would prefer to consider HOW to think about an idea before they want to consider the idea, itself. So, for them, this may seem a bit like overkill. But there are definitely people whom can be far more productive if they can bounce around storing data as it surfaces in their mind, rather than when they have time to categorize it.