Links vs Tags vs Folders

Last updated Nov 7, 2022 Edit Source

Knowledge management

Reddit post on subject

Video on subject

Generally links should be used, with e.g. MOCs instead of folders. The only advantage of folders is that they are useful for when you need to export the vault to some other system where folders are more useful.

Tags could be used for when

1. You specifically don’t want a hub note on a subject
2. You want to specify the status of the note, e..g todo item
3. You want to characterize the type of note, e.g. literature note from book vs from video or note on self-reflection

Try to only use folders when you want to hide information, e.g. daily notes or notes on people.

Source: Obsidian post on topic

• Tags can be used to store metadata about the notes, while core ideas should be notes. Links should be bidirectional relationship between notes.
• You can search using tags and use tags to filter your search. Tags can therefore be useful for time-based filtering or location-based filtering (stay-abroad-2022 or 02-02-2022 or tag: plugin.).
• Tag Wrangler is a must for using tags in Obsidian.
• MOCs can play some of the same role as Tags, but they are not as elegant in terms of searching and the graph view.

Source

Source
Searches can combine tags like # diet and # insulin to find searches that satisfy both constraints. E.g. in my vault I could search for # programming and # psychology and find notes that address both of these topics. This not something I would be able to do with MOCs.

Source
This is a somewhat convoluted article without a clear conclusion, but I got one takeaway:

• Tags should be object tags. Topic tags are concepts which may be arbitrarily added to a note. Object tags are concepts which are inherent to the notes at hand. I.e. a note on CUDA could have an object tag of # gpuprogramming, and the topic tags of # computer hardware and # programming.

The problem with OS folders versus tags is that many notes have multiple tags and therefore, if I move it into one folder, its can’t be in another folder. Making duplicate notes or mirrored notes is silly. - Source

This is a serious problem when working with my Public/Private/Protected system of note availability. It might therefore be better to use tags instead if folders after all. In that way I could have a Programming/CUDA instead of having two identical folders in my Private and Public directories each with their own notes. I could always write a python script that creates the virtual directory structure when uploading to my Quartz website.

The source also mentions “Text ({expand}}” plugin, which could be used to generate links in MOCs to all notes which contain a tag. The MOC then works as a virtual folder.

Tags to mark what something is “about”. When these build up a bit in the graph, I can see where an MOC might be useful. It isn’t always. Tags are bottom up and MOCs are top down.

Many people recommend to start with topic tags and then move to a MOC when the need arises.