I’m new to Obsidian and [[wikilink]] powered notetaking in general. One thing that runs through my head every time I go over a note is “how often should I be making links?”
If you have a note about the United States Presidents, do you link every instance of a president, just the one time, or every instance that seems important?
I’m not really sure what the pros/cons of following any particular method are, and I don’t know if there is any useful functionality to bother providing multiple identical links within a note.
What do you all do? Why?
I generally only link ‘important’ references. If it doesn’t feel important enough, I just leave it how it is, but I do want to generally make sure the reference is spelled the same way (or the same way as an alias), so I can see the reference in the unlinked backlinks section.
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If there are multiple very different “important” references in a single note, do you link it multiple times?
Generally, no, as I find it declutters the linked references tab. Unless there are multiple mentions in different sections, because I might want to make these sections into their own notes further down the line (e.g. using Refactor) and in that case, I don’t want to have to make links again.
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I loosely adhere to a “first-mentioned” principle. So if a have a “readable” note (i.e., not a MOC, Index or the like), I link whenever the person/location/thing is first mentioned (usually in the first few paragraphs). After that, the same person/location/thing is not linked anymore.
Since everything has exceptions, I do link a second (or third) time when I already know that a part of the text might later be referenced or embedded (like in the “Installation” part of my notes on software).
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