Things I have tried
Testing and Reading
What I’m trying to do
As I’m trying to develop a system of working and organizing, I’ve stumbled on a small problem. Often, when I read articles I like to mark them up on the spot w/ tags and potential page links, because I’m not ready to make actual pages or literature notes on them. I just want to set markers such that when I search later, I can leverage the work I did on these marked-up notes and add them to my research. That’s really working for me.
By marking potential page topics, I can also skim dense texts and when bracketed, they stand out nicely, and if later I had made an actual page, I can preview the contents—very cool.
But the problem comes in when I’m creating potential pages and there’s a slight discrepancy, for example with names. In one article, someone might be [[John Doe]], in another [[John X. Doe]]. Later, if I decide to make a page called “John Doe,” I will have a bunch of [[John X Doe]] potential pages mucking up my graph and causing confusion (I might in some cases, not notice and create 2 similar pages). Or if I decide to call my page [[Doe, John X]], then I have two other (potential) pages.
If I knew in advance what I wanted to call my actual page, I could plan for it via aliases, but most of the time, I dont until months later. But even if I do, adding new aliases and then going back and inserting them in the document in the moment adds a lot of friction when I just want to do a quick read and mark-up.
I’m struggling to find a strategy for adjusting my workflow to solve this issue. Is there an easy way to consolidate these other no-longer-needed potential pages? Only thing I can think of is edit/replace across the whole project, but that seems tedious. Maybe there’s a more simple way to work or to fix later?
Does this make sense?
Another example is that might mark [[The Committee on Social Research]] and somewhere else I might have already marked [[Committee on Social Research]]… At some point, I will choose to make a page on one of them, but how do I deal with the other potential page w/ a slightly different name?
One option is to not make potential pages at all until I’m ready to make an actual page and use aliases to find every variation only at that point. But the downside is that I like marking the terms as I see them because it helps me underscore potential future ideas while I’m in the moment of reading the article. Also, that would allow me to leverage potential links in the graph and elsewhere, plus previewing the content when the content exists.
What are some of your workflows and strategies for page links and potential page link naming?
Best,
R