In summary
Here is the second online resource I built by leveraging the content of my own LLM-wiki knowledge base. In #92, “What I Think”, I took almost five years and ninety issues of TRUST-able and turned them into a small resource showing what I think and who influenced me.
This time, I went in another direction. Instead of publishing another article, I reassembled knowledge objects from my archive and recombined them into a practical resource for experts, consultants and independent entrepreneurs:
It is a map of 25 editorial formats that can help you demonstrate your competence and judgment online, without making the weekly article the only way to show what you know.
The article you are reading right now explains this idea. The online resource I have built gives you something useful to browse, save and come back to.
What I Built
In essence, “25 Ways To Show Your Expertise” is two things in one.
First, it is a reference map of 25 alternative editorial formats, organized into six groups: Fast Starts, Learning Guides, Things in Order, Other Voices, Big Collections, Long Plays.
Each format can be opened to reveal:
what it is
what kind of expertise it demonstrates
how it can be used
examples of people already using it
how much competence, time and complexity it usually requires
Second, it is a simple selector. You can use it to identify which formats may be more appropriate for your specific situation. How much do you already know about your subject? How much time do you have? How complex or difficult is the format?
Based on your answers, the resource helps you see which possibilities may deserve your attention first.
It does not tell you what type of content you must create, but it gives you a clearer view of the editorial formats options you have available.
Why I Built It
Most experts are still encouraged to follow one standard publishing model: choose a topic. Write an article. Publish it. Repeat next week.
Articles are useful. They explain ideas, introduce new perspectives and give people a reason to discover your work. But they are not the only way to show your expertise in a way that builds value and compounds over time.
Knowledge infrastructures become reference resources. A directory can show that you know the important people, sources and tools in a field. A comparison can show how you evaluate different options. A timeline can show that you understand the history of an idea. A reading path can show how you think somebody should enter a complex subject. A collection of cases can show that you know what real success looks like. A map can show how the different parts of a field connect.
Each of these curated editorial formats reveals something different.
The problem is that most experts have these possibilities scattered across years of articles, notes and recommendations. The material exists, but it is not generally organized in a way that allows other people to easily extract the maximum value out of it. That’s why I wanted to build something that could have helped resolve this very problem.
I also wanted to see if the type of resources one could build in place of articles could demonstrate what I have been arguing for some time: showing your criteria, your choices and your judgment may be more convincing than simply sharing your viewpoint, advice and recommendations.
How I Arrived At It
The original material from which I built this resource already existed in #72, The Full Curator’s Format Library: 25 Formats That Build Expert Authority Without Writing.
In that very long article, I organized 25 curated content formats into five stages, according to how much visible proof of authority somebody had already built online.
But while turning the article into an interactive resource, I started questioning that structure.
The five stages I had originally used, were combining different things:
how much knowledge a format requires
how difficult it is to produce
how much time it takes
how much visible authority someone has already built
These things are related, but they are not the same. A format can take five minutes but require twenty years of experience. Another format can take several days but be relatively simple to understand. So I removed the idea of a single ladder and separated all of the criteria.
This was one important realization I arrived at while building this new resource.
The Role of the Knowledge Base
All of the information inside “25 Ways To Show Your Expertise” existed now - in a distilled format - also inside my personal knowledge base (My Curator, an open-source application based on Andrej Karpathy’s LLM-wiki concept. I wrote about it in #76). I have been feeding this base with my TRUST-able articles since April.
The basic idea is to let an AI read your documents, distill and organize the information inside them into a growing, interconnected wiki of concepts, entities, summaries and relationships.
Instead of having a pile of separate articles, you have a structured body of knowledge that you can question and reorganize.
And so, in this specific instance, the knowledge base helped me:
find formats I had described in different articles
identify duplicate and overlapping categories
connect formats with relevant examples
compare the strengths and weaknesses of each format
surface the criteria I had been using without clearly naming them
But the knowledge base did not make the final decisions. It gave me material and possible connections. I still had to decide what belonged in the resource, how the groups should be organized, how the formats should be scored and what the reader should see.
This system helped me build the map. But I still had to decide what the map was supposed to show to be useful for those I was building it for.
How Does This Connect to Liquid Content?
In #91, I wrote about liquid content: the idea that an article does not have to be the final form of what you know. It can become the entrance to a larger resource.
This new project - “25 Ways To Show Your Expertise” - is my second practical test of that idea.
With it, I am trying to demonstrate that the same archive can become:
an article explaining an idea
a map showing the territory
a directory of trusted sources
a comparison helping someone choose
a decision tree
a collection of cases
an interactive tool
The knowledge is not necessarily new every time. But the editorial format is different because the reader’s need is different.
Somebody may want to understand how I think. Somebody else may want to decide what to publish next. Another person may want to find the most useful format for his or her current level of expertise.
One article cannot serve all those needs equally well. But a connected body of knowledge can.
That is why I see “25 Ways To Show Your Expertise” as more than a repackaged article. It is an example of how one archive can be turned into a useful knowledge infrastructure.
What You Can Do With Your Own Work
You do not need to begin with all of your articles. Look at the work you have already published and ask yourself:
What questions do I answer repeatedly?
What solutions have I recommended in different articles?
What sources do I keep returning to?
What examples have I collected?
What alternatives have I compared?
What decisions do people regularly struggle with?
Then gather that material and ask your AI to extract the key concepts, entities, summaries, examples and sources.
You can use My Curator, Gemini Notebook, Claude, ChatGPT, or another system.
If you use a general AI system, it may help to share with your AI the LLM-wiki concept before uploading your material. Just feed Andrej Karpathy’s paper to it. Upload it, copy and paste it, or give it a link to it. That will make your AI organize your sources into a connected, reusable knowledge base rather than simply summarize each document separately.
Then ask your AI to help you create:
a) a map of the different solutions, strategies or formats contained in your work; and
b) a simple selector or decision tool that helps people identify which option is most appropriate for their situation.
N.B.: Do not leave the final judgment to AI. Check the important claims against your original material. Keep the sources attached. Make clear what came from somebody else, what you interpreted and what you added yourself.
This type of resource becomes useful because of what you have chosen to include in it, your curated selection and it feels trustable because people can now see how you made your choices.
What I Discovered
By building this resource, I sensed again beyond theoretical constructs and in practical terms what it means to move from a traditional editorial calendar built from articles, to creating resources from liquid content and a personal knowledge base.
You do not always need to invent a new idea. You can take what you have already explored, and then organize it differently and make it more useful to somebody else.
You can show your criteria without boasting about them. You can show your taste, your judgment and your experience through the choices you make.
As a matter of fact, when you access “25 Ways To Show Your Expertise” you’re seeing two things:
A map of alternative editorial formats to show expertise online
My vision, criteria, competence, thinking on that front.
Writing an article is still valuable. But the article may no longer be the only key output. It can also be, like in this very case, the door into something that people can use, save, bookmark and return to.
One archive. Many knowledge objects. Different forms for different needs. That is the direction I want to keep exploring.
Nota Bene
This is my current map, not a complete catalogue of every possible editorial curated format alternative to the article and capable of showing your expertise.
The criteria I have used are editorial estimates, not scientific measurements.
The recommendations are not dogmatic prescriptions.
Some of the examples I have provided will eventually need updating, as much as this resource will need maintenance. That is part of the responsibility of building a resource instead of publishing a one-time article.
Paradata
Why / Intent:
I built this as a follow-up to #92 and as a practical continuation of the idea of liquid content I explored in #91. The intent was to go deeper into this direction, and try to build a new resource from information I had already inside my knowledge base.
Process:
I looked inside my knowledge base which had been published but which was too constrained by the article format, where you can see only a very small fraction of the whole thing at a time. There’s no panorama mode. In those situations, I have learned there’s a perfect opportunity for using an alternative editorial format, something that looks more like a simple interactive information resource than an article.
That’s how I rapidly identified the large set of curated content formats I had covered both in
and in
and decided to make an interactive map of them.
I used The Curator to extract and connect the material. I then reviewed the results, removed duplicates, completely reconsidered the original five-stage model I had first used in my article.
Later, as I was thinking of how to make this resource as useful as possible, I thought what a typical expert, would want to ask this resource for his needs. And obviously what he would ask is “which of these formats are best if I know “this much”, I have “x” time and want something that is not too complex to create?”. Or any variation of it. That’s what prompted me to design and integrate a decision-support selector built around competence, time and complexity. It helps my reader filter and see what’s relevant when matched to his specific needs and context.
I prototyped the design and functionality inside Claude Opus 5 and went through tens of versions before arriving at what is online now. In general, I provided specific design constraints to the AI, visual references to a precise design style for which I had no real master source. In the beginning I asked for contact sheets containing up to 12 alternative designs respecting my defined design DNA, but exploring different typography, layout formats and colors. I gradually filtered and refined those designs over several sessions to arrive at a final look I approved.
The final categories, criteria, examples, wording and interface are the result of both AI-assisted research and my own editorial decisions.
The new resource is available here: 25 Ways To Show Your Expertise
Time:
for resource: “25 Ways To Show Your Expertise”
Research and brainstorming: 1 hrs
Analysis and verification: 2 hrs
Design and prototyping: 2.5 hrs
Editing + refinements: 1.5 hrs
Publishing online: 0.5 hrs
Tot time: 7.5 hrs
for this edition of TRUST-able
Drafting of this article: 2 hrs
Editing and revising: 1.5 hrs
Formatting: 0.5 hrs
Illustrations: 0.5 hrs
Cover design: 1 hr
Total apx time: 13 hrs
Tools:
ChatGPT Luna High - for brainstorming, analysis, illustrations and cover design
Claude Opus 5 High and Sonnet 5 Medium - for resource design and development
My Curator - personal knowledge base - interfaces directly with Claude
Cover image: 25 Ways To Show Your Expertise. Concept by Robin Good. Image generation by ChatGPT Image 2.5.
What I Offer
The Curation-Based Authority System (free)
55 minute video workshop illustrating how to build authority and credibility by creating high-value curated content formats, rather than original essays.
Make Your Expertise Buyable
private credibility and authority audit to help you show others how you differ and why your expertise is so valuable
Follow a path with a heart.
From Koh Samui (TH)
Robin Good