How to name note to work well with MoCs?

[ptsl]

I used to use a directory structure before I switched to Obsidian. For example, my notes on programming languages would be structured like this:

Python/Books
Python/Blogs
Python/Examples
Python/Libraries

Go/Books
Go/Blogs
Go/Examples
Go/Libraries

The same goes for other languages, too. The notes in the directories tend to be named identically. The same for other stuff, for example I had notes named MS Word/Keyboard Shortcuts, VSCode/Keyboard Shortcuts, etc.

Now that I’ve switched to Obsidian and read some theory on knowledge organization, the Zettelkasten method and related topics, I decided that the flat structure (having all notes in a single folder) would be the best approach. Thus I renamed my notes to:

Python Books
Python Blogs
Python Examples
Python Libraries

and so on. I thing this approach is superior because the title conveys the complete information about the note’s content. And that’s good.

In the next step I created MoC notes with lists of their related child notes. I didn’t like that every item started with the word Python, Go or VSCode, so I used aliased links:

* [[Python Books|Books]]
* [[Python Blogs|Blogs]]

The MoC is now rendered as:

* Books
* Blogs

Now, I like this approach (the names are terse), but I hate the process. I have to type the parts of the title twice. I would like just to type the first few letters and hit the Enter when a completion dialog pops up. Moreover, if I rename a file, I need to find the links and check if they are OK.

Maybe you can suggest some other approach I haven’t tried yet, maybe something based on note properties, Dataview, or a plugin. Again, I like how the information is displayed, would like to simplify the process. Any suggestions are welcome.

[holroy]

You should look into aliases, which I think would solve your issue. Have the note properly named, like “Python Books” and “Go Books”, but add “Books” as alias to both of them.

Now when you’ll start a link using autocompletion, you could either type “pyth…” to get all Python books and select the link (and variant of the link you’ll want) , or do “Books”, and select the variant you want.

[ptsl]

Oh. I know about aliases… but I rejected them because I thought (mistakenly) that they needed to be unique.

Thank you for your answer.