#1

I’ve read quite a lot of articles about Zettelkasten Method (including almost every post regarding IDs at zettelkasten.de) and I still do not understand why should I use UID (like:202005221011)? :roll_eyes:

#2

It’s the Zettelkasten idea of a unique ID. You could use something else like a normal time stamp 2020-05-22, or “my file name is unique”. The Zettelkasten UID makes it easy for sorting (first/last), but it takes a while to get used to looking at those.

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#3

Like the thing is just about sorting?

#4

The main purpose of IDs in these plain-text systems is to make sure all files have unique, static file names. You then link to other notes via their IDs (or including IDs), knowing that even if you change the descriptive title of a note, the ID will remain the same, so links never completely break. As such “1231231231 Platonic Forms” could be renamed to “1231231231 Platonic Ideas”, but any links, i.e. [[1231231231]], would still link to the same file.

However, in a system like Obsidian, which updates links if you rename files, this isn’t really necessary anymore, as you can link [[Platonic Ideals]], and it will automatically change to [[Platonic Forms]] if you change the title of the note. In this case, the function of the ID seems to be reduced mostly to sorting, or as a temporary name.

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#5

I’ve been playing with using hidden UIDs on every line within files, to see if that could provide more nuanced linking. If possible that bring some of the power of outliners identifying particular lines of text without killing the readability.

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