Add "Unrequited notes"

Feature requests
1

Use case or problem

When working in an important note with a bunch of links (MOC), the linked mentions don’t tell you what notes you’ve already added to your active note.

Unrequited notes are notes that point directly to the active note. But the active note doesn’t point back.

Unrequited notes are often the solution to that feeling of “I know I have another note about this somewhere”.

Unrequited notes help you resurface missing thoughts in the right context. It’s like you are putting on night vision goggles: you see things hidden in the shadows. (Personally, I call in “LYT Vision”.)

Proposed solution

Add unrequited notes as a toggle within “Linked mentions” as part of the core “Backlinks” plugin.

Current workaround (optional)

My current workaround is to add a template to the bottom of an MOC to “activate LYT Vision”:

TABLE file.mtime.year + "-" + file.mtime.month + "-" + file.mtime.day as Modified

FROM [[{{title}}]]
and !outgoing([[{{title}}]])

SORT file.mtime desc

h/t to Pat Hope where I first encountered the general sense of this query.

Related feature requests (optional)

I also sent a feature request to @NothingIsLost to see if it could be added to the Query Control plugin.

1 Like
2

I think I really like this idea, but would like to understand how it would work in practice. (I would like an option when adding a link from A to B to also have Obsidian add a link in B to A. But “where does the link in B go” is the sticky question — plus the complexity of block and heading links.)

@nickmilo, help me understand what would be different in this display that isn’t already there?

CleanShot 2022-07-17 at 14.25.19@2x
CleanShot 2022-07-17 at 14.25.19@2x1154×506 28.2 KB

2 Likes
3

I’d find this very useful for working on MOCs. I also take pretty extensive lit notes and this would be useful for those (e.g. if I’ve mentioned Book A in Note B but not vice versa, that’s a sign it was an incomplete reference I need to work on bc it hasn’t been integrated into my index of notes for the book).

1 Like
4

Unrequited notes show their power when you’re looking at an MOC that already has a bunch of links, so in the AppleJuice note they wouldn’t be useful.

5

Yep, that would be good example of where unrequited notes can be effective.

6

I would definitely like it if Obsidian would have an option to add a link in B when adding a link from A to B.

1 Like