"+Add These Rem To Your Knowledge Base" -- please explain how this works

RemNote Learning RemNote
#1

I find I’ve been reluctant to add tutorial tips to my knowledge base because I don’t quite understand how they work. I tried one an ended up with items in my queue that I didn’t think I would get, and don’t know where it is and how it can be manipulated.

Here are a couple of questions that would help me understand (but please structure your response, if you think it would be more helpful, to answer the question I should have asked):

  • When I click “+Add…” is a rem copied to my knowledge base? is just a portal added to my knowledge base? Where in my knowledge base is it placed?

  • What is the best way to search for an “+Add…” item after adding it? When I search, I can’t seem to find it, except that it points back to the tutorial.

  • If I “+Add…”, and the RemNote developers update the thing I added, will this be updated in my knowledge base? In other words, is this a sync or a copy or neither?

  • Similarly, is the “+Add…” behavior in the tutorial the same as if it were a shared document?

  • In a shared document, what is the difference between the “Import it to your own account” action and the “+Add These Rem To Your Knowledge Base” action?

Yawʌkoˀ (thanks!)

#2

Good questions!

  1. Yes - the Rem is copied to your knowledge base. The first time you do this, a new document is created within your knowledge base. This document has the same folder path as the source document - if these folders didn’t already exist, they are created as well.
  2. You should be able to open up a pane on the right with your imported version of the Rem by clicking the notes icon in the top right.
  3. It will not automatically update, to allow you to customize it for yourself. It’s a copy.
  4. Yes, the “+Add” behavior is the same.
  5. Those are the same - we’ll rename them to clarify, thanks!
#3

Thank you @Martin! Upon digging, I found three separate top level rem named RemNote in my knowldege base containing parts of the tutorial or keyboard shortcuts. I assume that is because I’ve clicked “+Add…” or “Learn this shortcut in your queue” at different times. These contained some parent structure (makes sense) but also some duplication of parent structure and some confusing duplication of references.

I haven’t thought through the implications of this, but it would be helpful if RemNote would attempt to insert the copied rem into an existing matching hierarchy already in my knowledgebase. Perhaps giving a prompt like “Would you like to copy into this existing matching hierarchy?” This would give the advantage of “filling in” a more coherent set of rem.

This could be especially useful in the workflow case of a teacher who was sharing a document of, say, a skeletal outline of class notes for students to import and supplement in their own knowledge base. With my suggestion, students could add to a coherent set of notes over time, even with the teacher uploading additions or tweaks. This is actually a feature that I really like about public Anki decks. While it isn’t a true sync (no student improvements get synced back to the public deck, but then, they aren’t always “improvements”), the teacher doesn’t have to worry about duplicates or clobbering student data when pushing an updated master deck. I haven’t fully tested this in Anki, but my preliminary playing around with it allayed some concerns about importing into an already existing deck.

Of course, fully collaborative RemNote documents on the roadmap would be great, but I hope my use case here illustrates the utility of something less than a full sync. Please also consider students in this scenario who would be served best by not having to have the pro version. RemNote has really given me a paradigm shift for the education of my younger children. I am much more attentive to their note taking using RemNote rather than relying (only) on logically sequenced curricula to provide repetition (of the sort found in Core Knowledge, Saxon Math, etc. etc. which really amount to a crude version of spaced repetition).

#4

Noted and agreed!

Figuring out an elegant way to merge hierarchy representations with slightly different text is definitely a standing design challenge here - we’ll think about your suggestion of just having the user do it explicitly, thanks.