The remaining advantages of tags over properties in Obsidian

Feature requests
7

Another tag advantage is that I can use them inline, meaning they can reference a specific part / sentence in a note. In search that context is shown.

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8

Hi. Does this currently work for searching boolean/number/date property values? I haven’t got it working.

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9

Not, yet. there are open FRs for number and Boolean. You can open one for dates.

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10

In your screenshot, you have links for the up and down properties but not for the domains and fields properties. I’m just wondering why this is the case? Not for any judgmental reason, just genuinely interested.

11

great question, it’s because of this:

While Octavia Butler’s work can be classified under Art and Writing, I don’t want a note called “Art” to have every possible person who I’ve classified with Art to show up there.

It’s a preference to keep links meaningful. I’d rather have my notes linked to “Art” be about art. This is especially important early on in a new note’s lifecycle, where the entire tenor of a note is influenced by the notes already linking to it.

Instead, being able to run a looser tag-like search (where clicking on it would populate results in the sidebar) would be preferred. The functionality is mostly already there to pull it off:

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12

Somebody already mentioned my FR above (Properties: Recognize tags in text property when formatted as "#tags"). Not sure what is the difference between this FR and mine?

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13

Hi. What do you think about my idea of “super properties” that I presented in this thread (I haven’t yet received any comments)

14

Seems a bit convoluted, for me personally, since we already have a core feature that is linked (if not meant) to search. I like that tags are explicit with the syntax. CSS and backend shenanigans go a bit against the “plain text” philosophy imo (and I’m not even sure this is at all possible with CSS… but I’m no expert there).

15

Very much this!

From 2020-22, I had a weekly scheduled 1:1 meeting with my manager. Throughout the week, if I saw an item I wanted to discuss at that meeting, I tagged it with his name. Just before the meeting, I compiled the list into an agenda and was able to get through the meeting quickly and efficiently.

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16

Thanks for sharing this! Tags are definitely useful regardless of properties. Your example shows that tags are not going anywhere. People know how to use them effectively.

To every reader: see my other comment if you want a general picture of how tags could be used.

17

I’m smiling with you as you pulled up that inline note. Always a good feeling.

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18

I use tags pretty heavily. To begin with, this was honestly carryover from Evernote, but I find that they help me in a similar manner as MOCs (used in tandem with MOCs) to manage bottom-up organization structure without getting lost.

I tag my notes with all the major subject areas they fall under – essentially what would be, if I were using Dewey Decimal numbers, the equivalent of tagging a note as 600 and 640 and 647. Because they’re not in a hard structure, I can tag them for multiple categories if there’s overlap. And I can certainly use the note outside the obvious designation(s). But it means that if I’ve made a lot of small notes that have otherwise gotten somewhat “lost in the depths” of the vault, I can still find them – and I often will pull up a whole section that way in order to start a MOC and reorganize things.

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19

I strongly agree, Nick. It will be great to have feature parity since I think properties are the future.

But for now, I continue to add data in two places: (1) frontmatter and (2) tags, so to get benefits from both metadata approaches. I would prefer, though eventually, to use Properties.

I’ll draw some attention to this post for more feedback.

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20

Especially using tag wrangler to make “Tag Pages” by adding tags as aliases to a note, so they then appear as unlinked mentions. Pretty cool!

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21

Well said. I agree and wait for devs to make their next steps.

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22
  • As properties stand now:
    • A tag is a label or series of nested keywords. This age old stalwart does one thing and it does it very well; just like all the other note making and knowledge tools we’ve ever used.
      • In obsidian tags have “baked in” core functionality the other properties don’t yet have; nesting for example and, I suspect, indexing. This is the only non community plugin way to create hierarchies with meta data today; although with careful use of dataview From & Where clauses and properties, you can create them for the output list or table.
    • The other properties have properties (type) just like any object oriented programming language and database. Some of the properties can be containers for other stuff (list and text properties can contain text or links); implied subtype.
  • I’ve assigned basic properties to nearly all my notes, but am holding off on anything further until the core database features and functionality is known.
    • Just being able to do this has made my vault incredibly useful, for me, and I’ve re-discovered the value & joy, and distraction, of Dataview.
    • Other than nesting, I’m waiting to see what the difference is between tags and the other properties.
  • Why?
    • Currently, all frontmatter pertains to a note. If that is a core design for the future, it will fundamentally change the way I use obsidian; yep, I’ll be forced to atomize:) Not a bad thing, but a huge effort.
    • In my case, I run the risk of over assigning properties and then having to clean them up again. This is an important point to make - consider the effort most of us are now making cleaning up history and with assigning new properties. If we are making the wrong choices now, how much will the effort be when the core database functionality is released?
  • I am an Obsidian lifer because of the community. But I feel like the team needs to present some direction and guidance in this area. This is a significant inflection point.
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23

Ah yes…

One of the many reasons why I won’t be upgrading to properties any time soon. There is a fluidity to my current system and properties would throw all that into turmoil/

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24

Not a rebuttal, just some thoughts in reply to keep the convo going.

I feel this. There are subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which Obsidian encourages us to work in files vs. blocks:

And to this I must agree, and because of other sentimental reasons, like devs both being University of Waterloo alums, which is true of me. I also respect they are new parents probably feeling how I feel right now lol.

But it is true that (as with the majority of other tools these days), changes are incremental and IP has to be protected by not revealing too much. I understand this even if I don’t like it. But there are folks in this community who design their lives around use of this tool, so some I sympathize with the desire for more information since I myself, as a professional researcher, feel overwhelmed by the evolving capacity of Obsidian and the resulting changes I have to make to my flow.

edit 2023-10-23 1545-50 - I am also seeing the writing on the wall with regards to files vs. blocks. The coming “Database” feature means files, not blocks. I’m not complaining. I think a Database feature would make Properties more meaningful and useful. Dataview is powerful, Datacore will be more powerful, and core Databases will be wonderful for my mental bandwidth if I use it (and hopefully Datacore and core Databases prove to be the same thing, with “Datacore” being a hint that Dataview is being sherlocked).

I will make an additional and final comment. A nested tag is equal to a Property. E.g., #genre/science-fiction is equal to

---
Genre: Science Fiction
---

However, what is lost by using a property instead of a tag is what @ton mentions:

We also lose “clickable search” (one of @nickmilo’s original points in this topic) and finally, bulk editing and renaming via Tag Wrangler (can use Visual Studio Code “Replace in File” instead, but this is not user friendly or as convenient when attempting to conduct oneself entirely in Obsidian).

But what is gained by using a property instead is de-cluttering the content of a note and individual blocks of text, as well as reducing the overall number of tags in the vault which is nice for sanity.

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25

One should also ask how to work with individual text blocks. Should they be separate notes which can then be organized be properties? In theory we could have very fluid workflow to transfer text blocks to new notes with a backlink. This doesn’t mean tags are completely useless, but their usefulness is more and more unobvious. At least tags could be used to add metadata to tasks, but none of us know in which direction task management in Obsidian is going. Maybe we can associate tasks to notes in some day. Why do care about inline metadata because we could have a separate note entry for such thing?

26

I can only say that using Obsidian and by trying to maximize the utility of blocks and search results, I have become very good at writing paragraphs.

But to your point, how to work with text blocks indeed. In-line links attempts to render blocks as less necessary than tags (I would argue), so that is one suggestion, and then of course, as you say, these links lead to pages with properties that somehow add value to the blocks in which the links to these files may be found.

I don’t use tasks in Obsidian so I won’t make any comments there, but regarding in-line metadata, it (for me) helps me to stay “in the content” rather than “in the file” so that instead of thinking about properties, I’m thinking about what I’m writing.

In short, links (pages/files) require or in some way encourage me to think more about file management, but tags seem to help me simplify.

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