Feature: Include more data about friends

[omarkohl]

In particular I can think of the following:

• Significant relationships (e.g. names of spouses, children and pets)
• Gift ideas
• Likes, dislikes, allergies
• A picture
• Contact information
• Short biography
• Summary of the latest conversation

Basically what I am aiming at is approximate what Monica does. What I do not like about Monica is that it's PHP and requires a webserver, database etc. and I'm locking myself in to their format. A much more lightweight tool giving the essential features would suit my needs.

All this could be included in MarkDown files (#2) with a specific structure.

[rluetzner]

I stumbled over the Monica project as well, but other than your fear of getting locked in to their specific format I opted to write something new because I found the feature set of Monica too big for what I actually wanted to use.

My goal was to have a tool that would periodically remind me to get in touch with friends. Basically not much more than a recurring calendar event or task.

I was specifically not looking for a CRM type application which would take everything off my hands. I forget enough as it is (see this tool), but I'm trying to exercise my brain a bit at the same time. I fear putting something like significant relationships into a note would absolve my brain from remembering that information.

Alas, I'm also free not to enter and use all this information. 😄 So overall I'm not against extending the format, especially if we replace JSON with MarkDown anyway, but I would prefer not to make it part of the API. If we render the MarkDown docs according to your suggestion in #2 you would still get this additional information.

[omarkohl]

I was specifically not looking for a CRM type application which would take everything off my hands.

That's a valid design decision :slightly_smiling_face:

I would prefer not to make it part of the API

If it's not part of the API i.e. no CLI support for querying and entering the information and no enforcement of specific structure then it's not very valuable because writing stuff manually into MarkDown files is what I could do anyway.

I fear putting something like significant relationships into a note would absolve my brain from remembering that information.

That's a very philosophical question and I can see your point. The way I see it is that human brains are really bad at reliably storing information. Periodically refreshing memories is the only way to get around that limitation. And for periodic refreshers you need an external record :wink: I used to have a similar opinion to yours and I think the following quote is what made me change my mind.

The challenges of using Anki to store facts about friends and family: I've experimented with using Anki to store (non-sensitive!) questions about friends and family. It works well for things like “Is [my friend] a vegan?” But my use has run somewhat aground on thornier questions. For instance, suppose I talk with a new friend about their kids, but have never met those kids. I could put in questions like “What is the name of [my friend's] eldest child?” Or, if we'd chatted about music, I might put in: “What is a musician [my friend] likes?”

This kind of experiment is well intentioned. But posing such questions often leaves me feeling uncomfortable. It seems too much like faking interest in my friends. There's a pretty strong social norm that if you remember your friends' taste in music or their kids' names, it's because you're interested in that friend. Using a memory aid feels somehow ungenuine, at least to me.

I've talked with several friends about this. Most have told me the same thing: they appreciate me going to so much trouble in the first place, and find it charming that I'd worry so much about whether it was ungenuine. So perhaps it's a mistake to worry. Nonetheless, I still have trouble with it. I have adopted Anki for less personal stuff – things like people's food preferences. And maybe over time I'll use it for storing more personal facts. But for now I'm taking it slow.

http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html

[rluetzner]

I can imagine some CLI support, but it should be opt-in and I would like to retain the clean check output the tool is providing right now.

I'm having the most trouble with "short biography" or "summary of the latest conversation". I'm sure you don't want to record these as an additional CLI parameter. However I can imagine a command to open up an editor and append or updated the supplied text in the existing MarkDown file.

Another CLI command, e.g. info or details could be used to print the contents MarkDown file on the console. This could be expanded on by additional query parameters or rendering options.

[omarkohl]

The details how this could look would need to be hashed out. Your suggestions sound reasonable. Basically the question boils down to whether these additional pieces of information would be considered first-class citizens in the friendly-reminder world :wink:

[rluetzner]

I don't see why not. Let's keep this issue open for now and whenever #1 and #2 are done we can start breaking out your suggestions into separate issues and discuss how to make them first-class citizens.