@dmc Though I use tags in a completely different way, I am currently also considering the option of using nested tags - still haven’t come to a conclusion yet if they would rather structure or hinder my workflow; thus, I was curious reading your practice example. However, to be honest, I haven’t understood yet how nested tags help you with that. Maybe I didn’t get your point exactly - but how does it make a difference for your described workflow if you use a nested tag like #To/Read/Recommended or just a single tag like #ToRead or #Recommended-book?
This occurred to me today, and it’s suddenly put it all in place:
- Tags are best thought of as “specially designated search terms”. You can search for “recommended” but then you get every occurrence of that word. If you search for
#recommended, then you only get the tags. But it helps me to think of the question “Do I want this to be a tag rather than a bidirectionally linked word/phrase?” as equivalent to the question: “Do I want to be able to quickly see the search results for this?”
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I use a #howto tag and then add a separate #cook or #paint or #photography tags.
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How do you tell literature and evergreen notes apart in the graph?
So your experience is that it’s beneficial not to try do decide on a clearly defined set of topic tags, but rather add whatever tags seems most fitting in the moment. Going for a more “impulsive” decision is what eventually give the Zettelkasten its voice to talk back to you?
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Basically, this is my experience so far, yes. Because it prevents you to stay trapped in your predefined categories of thinking (that would be somehow the same as using folders, where you have to decide from the beginning what is the one topic this note belongs to; direct links - though of course I use them too - actually have the same effect: you have to decide from the beginning where this story might end up!) and makes it possible to discover relations you wouldn’t have seen otherwise.
Most of my productive writing results from using tags in this way.
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Thanks! I’ve lately felt some frustration over how I use tags, feeling that I use synonyms too often as one example. Before I stumbled on this tread, my plan was to try to define a fixed set of tags and just use them.
But the discussion here makes it obvious that a combination of clearly defined relationships (that is links between pages) and more vague (tags) is probably best for serendipity when using the Zettelkasten during output.
The links might then function as bridges between different thought patterns in the form of tag clusters.
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This is why I’ve been trying to start a conversation about implementing a toggle feature that would allow nested tags to be viewed in the graph as orthogonal trees - around which notes are clumped. I believe this can help us get a clearer visualisation of note structuring.
From what I’ve understood, nested tags are uni-directional, while note linkages are bi-directional. I think, having the above-mentioned scheme could enable to spot hierarchies that we personally default to.
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I noticed there are two main practices on using the tags: for holding meta-data, or for list topics/keywords.
The way tags are displayed in graph view make them not well-suited for holding meta-data of notes – the point of graph view is to show the connection of concepts/notes, yet their location in the YAML header makes them meta-data de facto. Add to that, a word prefixed with # makes it automatically a tag. I felt it would great if there is another category, say meta to hold the meta-data, while leaving tags and # for topics.
That is where dataview plugin comes in because dataview is able to search through the meta, but no graph views. I use type for my meta, such as todo, place, event, term, etc. tags are for topics for me.
As to tags vs links, tags for things that I don’t intend to create a page for and links for things that I intend to create a page for.
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I loved when you said:
Storing information or even knowledge is the easy part. Retrieving it is a fine art.
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I’ve read this thread twice already, top to bottom, and I still can’t figure out this dilemma for myself.
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I use tags as status/type indicators and everything else gets a link. I find it easier to build out a bigger note when I have it as a link/page once it gets enough other things linking to it that I want to develop the idea.
I call them Tagnotes and I talked about and demonstrated how I do it here: Obsidian Tagnotes - YouTube
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I feel this
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In some in-deep Zettlekasten studies, someone talks about “weak” and “strong” linking.
For example, if I write a zettle about the “Show don’t tell” method, I could link this article to the “Save the cat” method as their both anglosaxon method to construct a writing piece. It is a strong link, as I contextualise them into the article and they are directly related. I can also link the article to a extract from a book as a good example of “Show don’t tell” or my own analysis of a film. This process mimics the way your brain functions, creating associations between ideas to create new ideas.
But tags are different, as you can find yourself linking things together without context and evident relationship. For example, I can set a tag “Medical advise” with an article about healing a stomach pain and an other one about when consulting a physician for a headache is a good idea. They are not directly related even if they take place in the same field. But methods, causes and consequences are not the same at all.
When you study something, the ideal configuration is the one that requires you the less efforts as you need to concentrate a lot to gather and incorporate new knowledges. Direct linkings allow you to constantly call back what you learnd before. Tags allows you to create categories. Do you need categories ? To do what ?
Myself I don’t use them at all. I use to, because this feature is rather a convention, but I don’t need them anymore. For example I set up the tag “medicine advise” in the title with my file naming process : medecine notes begins with a number “013” and advise becomes “013.02.Headache.When call the doctor.Advice”. When I type “013.Advise” in my quick switcher, the research tools find for me every files from medecine with “advise” in their title. The page "“013.02.Headache.When call the doctor.Advice” is linked to the “013.02.Headache.Possible causes”.
I hope you find this usefull 
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During organizing existing documents without a good structure yet for MOCs, I find it useful to begin with tagging, then migrate to pages. I just released Tag Wrangler 0.5.0 with the ability to create Tag Pages so that one can convert a tag to a hybrid tag/page, and migrate tags to links via the “unlinked mentions”.
At some point, I may add a function for automated conversion in one direction or both to the plugin, but at least at the moment it gives you some maneuvering room between the two, without needing to decide once and for all that you’re using tags or links: tag pages let both co-exist at the same time for a given topic or state. And they’re especially useful for dataviews on state tags, as you can hover-preview them from the tag pane.
In a way, tag pages give you a privileged set of pages that can be readily accessed from a sidebar pane, which can make it easier to do hierarchical organization similar to Dendron – i.e. you can make a hierarchy of concepts in tags and link them to pages, even without the pages themselves needing to be named that way or in a folder hierarchy.
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I’m using tags and links for different purposes:
Links - to show connections between ideas
Tags - to build clusters of ideas with similar attributes. Used for filtering & searching of ideas
Does it make sense?
@Edmund - Nice diagram.
The only cornerstone I didn’t fully grasp was the “Folders - to group PROCESSES for creating different types of notes”.
How is a process filed into a folder?
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@JeffJAG Using Obsidian as a Zettelkasten, there is a workflow (process) from „Source“ (reading) to „Target“ (writing). For different steps of this workflow, I have different folders.
Here is more about: Limit folders. How to use Zettelkasten in Obsidian - #13 by Edmund
In each folder you can find notes with different structures, different attributes and different purpose. The folder structure supports this process and is very useful to inspect and adapt existing notes.
Lightbulb: instead of folders (except for reasons adjacent to processing), tags. Giving something two tags is pretty similar in a tag pane to nesting something 2 deep in a folder pane, and you get the option of having a thing in multiple tag groups, when you can’t have a thing in multiple folders.
The one loss, is I liked being able to create a new note and have it automatically in the same category (folder) as the previous note (because usually I create new notes of the same broad subject as the old). Is there a way I can do that with tags?