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> The problem wasn't the idea.

I'll double down: yes, the initial idea is the problem. In a large organization, you can never discard the old knowledge base because you do not understand it well enough. No one does. No one knows which pieces of the old knowledge base are useful to whom. So it sticks around indefinitely.

The best you can do as an individual is to gradually improve your corner of the knowledge base. The idea that "we'll create a new one and it'll be up-to-date forever" is unrealistic, it's wishful thinking. If we weren't able to do it with the old one, why think we'll be able to do it with the new one?



> yes, the initial idea is the problem. In a large organization, you can never discard the old knowledge base because you do not understand it well enough. No one does. No one knows which pieces of the old knowledge base are useful to whom. So it sticks around indefinitely.

If you don't understand an entry you can always copy it. It's not a very difficult task to make sure the new system starts with the same information as the old one.

> The idea that "we'll create a new one and it'll be up-to-date forever" is unrealistic, it's wishful thinking. If we weren't able to do it with the old one, why think we'll be able to do it with the new one?

This is a flaw with the actual idea, and a pretty big one, but it's a totally different flaw from failing to delete the old knowledge base.




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