[ldayley]

This is a fantastic idea, and I think the overall negativity misses the point of it being an evolving and collaborative project on github.

When you don't know what you don't know, any little map can be helpful to get one started.

When one desires to learn a skill they usually don't know what questions to ask to get started. This is one of the biggest challenges in learning, and there's a multibillion dollar industry devoted to easing that burden via textbooks and instructional videos. But equally important: beginners don't have a mental model for where that specific desired skill or knowledge lies on the continuum of the domain in which they're seeking to grow. This project puts skills in context, even if some of those contexts are (currently) very flawed.

For example, I've begun working with a couple of teenage garage bands that live near me. I have a lot of experience as a working musician, and they didn't have any at all-- but they knew they wanted to write, record, and perform teenage garage music. I noticed a "Music" domain on the maker tree. It could use improvement, but what it does is make clear that there's more to being a performing musician than learning guitar. In fact I've watched these kids go from "make a playlist" to "learn about copyright & licensing" to "produce a track with another person" to "play a ticketed show", and many of these steps were both required ("learn to keep a beat" springs to mind ;) ) and also not obvious to them when they started.

Each one of these domains is massive and full of intrinsic, context-dependent experiential knowledge. But they make a great starting point. I already learned some things about, say, the PCB design domain and have a better catalog of what I'd need to search the internet for to begin that rabbit-hole.

Edit: spelling, grammar