113 - Levels of Development make a Zettelkasten - What is the difference between zettelkasten and other note taking methods?
Using Obsidian as the Software Implementation, you can think of the different levels of development to better understand what a zettelkasten is:
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Referential System - would be creating notes without any links between them. When you want to “reference” a note, you pull it up through search or the note list.
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Wiki System - would be well written full notes on topics with some linking between notes. Think of Wikipedia as the prime example. You can still develop topics with a wiki but it is not built for that, it is built as referential tool. You wouldn’t be putting your random ideas on a topic inside it.
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Zettelkasten - is designed for the development of ideas. It accepts whatever you feed it and requires that you connect the notes to other ones and keep them digestible. This allows you to build up chains of information overtime.
The way I think about it would be to have a public facing wiki system, that is supported by a zettelkasten. Normally people don’t have wikis with super small entries filled with unimportant thoughts.
How you’d use the two together is whenever you reach a critical mass of notes around a topic in your zettelkasten, instead of writing a paper or blog post about it, you create a wiki entry. This is good because it makes sure you are only presenting ideas that have been fleshed out, saving people time.
Related Public Note Repositories