The short version of this question is why are mind maps touted as so great (sometimes pitched as the end-all of diagrams) given their limits to expressiveness?
This question is NOT meant to be a critique of Mind Maps.
I do know that mind maps are good for expressing hierarchical information but so often they are discussed as if all information is hierarchical. Furthermore it often claimed that information as a radial hierarchy will enable you to grasp, understand, conceptualize the information in some "better" way than what would otherwise be possible. They are talked about as a superior way to capture the details of a discussion or meeting as if discussions always yield inherently hierarchical information. Occasionally they are discussed in terms of how they represent the way the brain actually works.
In my information world separate branches merge, or I want to describe a process or procedure that loops (more like a flow chart) or emphasize relationships among nodes (like a concept map) and detail a sequence of parallel events (like a UML sequence diagram) and so forth.
No, I am not complaining that Mind Maps don't express all of these types of information and YES, I do realize that I am free to use multiple diagrams to cover the different aspects of a bit of knowledge.
But here I am asking -- why do mind maps get so much praise as diagram given the single dimension they deal with?