Main idea

A note on product context, a note on product memory and a note on customer knowledge management can be linked to one another without anyone knowing exactly what those three terms cover. The link exists, it displays, it can be followed — and it carries nothing: the three notes cross paths without understanding one another.

A network of notes draws its value from its links, and a link rests entirely on the words it is phrased in. If the word floats, so does the relation, and the defect stays out of sight: nothing flags an empty link. You find out at the moment of use, when the note you open through the link doesn't talk about what you thought it did.

That is the least obvious reason to keep a glossary: not to make the notes readable one by one — they already are — but to make what connects them reliable.

Why it matters

This shifts where you look for the weakness in a network of notes. It is usually blamed on the number of links, or on how well each one is explained; this case shows that a perfectly explained link can be fragile because one of the two terms it brings together is settled nowhere.

It also gives a criterion for choosing which words to stabilize first: the ones that appear in the titles of the most heavily linked notes.

Nuances and limits

The fragility only shows up between notes from neighboring domains: two notes whose vocabularies don't overlap at all run no risk of crossing paths without understanding one another — they never meet.

And stabilizing a word does not retroactively repair the links already made under a different meaning: those still have to be reread.

Open questions

• How do you detect a link that has gone empty, when nothing in the network tells it apart from a solid one?