# Roam: Being a Part of a Community ![rw-book-cover](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/static/images/article2.74d541386bbf.png) ## Metadata - Author: [[catominor3.medium.com]] - Full Title: Roam: Being a Part of a Community - Category: #articles - URL: https://catominor3.medium.com/roam-being-a-part-of-a-community-4becad5c0aca ## Highlights - One interesting thing started happening with the arrival of ObsidianMD: some of the very frequent and intensive users of Roam switched to it! Many of them quoted technological reasons:ObsidianMD (as its name suggests) saves everything in the so-called markdown — this offers a lot of portabilityFiles are saved locally on your hard disk by default — this gives you privacyIts graph representation of your database is actually useful — something that Roam has promised but not deliveredAnd its plugin ecosystem is mature with easy searching and installations — quite a contrast to the hacking nature of development for RoamThese arguments were expected by me, however, one more point emerged: The community. - I have my reasons not to use ObsidianMD currently. I can give you rational ones but to tell the truth, I think I do prefer Roam because I know it. It has become a familiar place for me where I feel comfortable. I feel at home there, it serves me well and it gets better and better in the direction I like. I immensely appreciate it and my personal experience with Roam community is nice.Would I recommended Roam to you over Obsidian? Yes! I still feel it has the smoothest note-taking experience I have ever had and it definitely changed the way how I work with notes. Its handling of references, embeds, mentions and other things is — albeit imperfect — better than anything I have ever seen elsewhere. - Roam is the first (and maybe the last?) software community I am part of. So I really don’t know how this clash will develop. Will be there an ultimate split? Something like VIM vs. Emacs? Playstation vs. Xbox? Peeling banana from the top and from the bottom? I hope not. People can and do find, luckily, middle grounds and many people on both sides can appreciate unique aspects of Roam and ObsidianMD.