this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2025
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Personal Knowledgebases

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From the commonplace book to the zettelkasten to the personal wiki, and everything in between. Technology-focused content and practice-based content both welcome. While we're still small, screenshots of your notes that you're particularly proud of are also welcome!

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I’m sure there are some #pkm people in here that use a digital #zettelkasten. How do you solve "where to file a note" problem? Let me elaborate.

I don’t use any IDs because it seemed that it's a paper process problem. At the same time, when I wrap up a note, I don’t immediately know which ones to link it to to add it to the graph. The paper approach solves this by filing it under the closest relevant ID.

If I don’t link the note immediately it's effectively lost forever, because it's outside of the graph, it most probably has some random title (titles are hard!) and it is in a folder with 400 other notes.

Maybe I should keep such notes as Fleeting until I can link them into the permanent graph? For me it created a problem of notes being fleeting for too long because there's no place to anchor then either.

I **suppose** that IDs solve this problem because you can always apply at least the "soft" structure of ID topics. But is there a better way?

@pkb @pkms

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 23 hours ago

@farcaller @pkb @pkms

> If I don’t link the note immediately it's effectively lost forever, because it's outside of the graph

This ought to be a problem for me but it just isn’t. When writing a new note I often use full-text search to see what other notes might usefully link to it. I’m aware that creating unlinked ‘orphan’ notes might be a problem so I tend to link if I can, provided it’s easy. Plus, I use TiddlyWiki, which gives me a list of orphan notes to review at will. Maybe other apps/scripts enable this too.