“I think that eliminating the concept of “folders” within the Obsidian interface would greatly simplify so many things.
I can’t think of any reasons to make the user manually keep track of “folders”. If there are use cases where this would cause a problem, I would be interested in hearing about them.“
I certainly understand you having a preference, but to assert it would simplify things is quite a stretch. Simplify for you and other users who like this approach maybe, but certainly not overall.
Human beings think categorically, it’s how we function. And a huge part of that thinking involves “containers”, because that’s how things work in the real world. I put papers inside of a manilla folder, and that folder is Not “another paper”, it’s a container with a title. Likewise that folder goes in a hanging folder which goes in a drawer which in turn goes in a file cabinet - all containers.
So the folder (container) and note (item) paradigm closely reflects real life and how most users are used to thinking.
Now of course the advantage of the digital world is that it doesn’t have the constraints of the physical world. So depending on the program the same note may be able to reside in multiple folders.
But even there, the direction most software has taken is to instead implement something like tags, while staying with the single folder paradigm, providing the best of both worlds.