After discussing my problems with WordPress on several forums, and researching the issues with a variety of web searches, I think that I have figured out the underlying issues. As with so many of my writings, this represents a more abstract way of thinking about the problem. Remember, as a physicist, I was trained to always ask “What is the essence of the problem?”
HyperText
My way of thinking about ideas is structured as a tree. For example, here’s how I conceive physics:
I don’t show any cross-links, but they show up in a full diagram; for example, the electromagnetism branch connects with the light branch a bit lower down, and the light branch connects with the relativity branch. Indeed, everything in physics ends up being cross-connected; that’s one of the beauties of the field.
This tree structure is called ‘hypertext’ and a single instance is called a ‘hyper document’. The World Wide Web is a huge hyper document.
Blogs
The blog structure sees information as a diary, like so:
January 1st: “Today I was thinking about collisions between particles. Surely momentum is conserved…”
January 2nd: “I wonder if light is best described as formed of waves or particles? The question…”
January 3rd: “A changing electric field induces a magnetic field, but…”
January 4th: “When does conservation of energy apply to collisions between particles?”
It adds tags and categories so that readers can search for related diary entries.
I deem such an intellectual structure inferior. It is rambling and incoherent; only a lazy mind would fail to take the time to organize their thoughts and instead present such a disorderly stream of consciousness.
Books
The third structure commonly used is the book. A more disciplined thinker will write down a collection of notes in something like a blog form and then organize them into a single book. This is superior to the blog structure, but lacks the intellectual organization of the hypertext structure.
WordPress is organized around the blog structure, the weakest and laziest of the three information structures. Therefore, I must abandon that structure.