@Sascha said:
My advice: Start with structure notes right from the beginning. The direct links from content note to content note will not be harmed if you have the structural layer on top.
In the beginning, I had so much to learn about onboarding ideas in my ZK. It used to be talked about quite a bit in the forums, (...) that one of the essential factors in the ZKM was that you should resist the desire to impose top-down structure and let structure naturally emerge from a mass of notes.
I am a bit late to the party. But a structure note does not impose top-down structure. If you create a structure note it first an empty space with no structure at all:
It is an empty canvas conceptive for any kind of structure. Most of the time, the structure emerges bottom-up.
@Sascha, do you remember how you understood structure notes when you had 25 notes? When was that? Just let us know which geologic era it was? Was that in the Triassic period or the Carboniferous period?
When I had 25 notes I had an analog Zettelkasten and no clue what any kind of note was. I just have read Luhmann's Communication with Zettelkastens, lived in a one-room-appartment in 2008/2009. It was about the time I started to talk to Christian who at the time used Devon Think.
The first hint of something like a structure note came in 2010/2011 when I processed the book The Perfect Health Diet by Jaminet/Jaminet. This was the first book I processed fully and thoroughly since it was corner stone content to my work back then. It happened when I enriched a note with links and felt in my gut how this note pulled in the content of the other notes. I can't remember though if I showed it Christian later in the day or if I even ran to him (we were neighbors). Our friendhip was fresh, I was way to crazy, Christian way to timid.
wow! over a year to reply! apologies that i have been offline here for sooo long!
i think you have the right of it, darryl: top-down implies that one is creating a structure before one has thoroughly grokked a topic. one can create a zettel that points to other zettels without imposing a hierarchical structure. for example, if i discover an interest in aristotle and suspect that i’m going to dive more deeply into to topic, it would not be unreasonable to create a structure note that points to his ethics vs metaphysics zettels, or to contemporaries such as plato or maybe modern criticism by kant.
i think these are the kind of bottom-up structures that suggest themselves early on and so there is little danger of creating false or erroneous structures.
I have been thoroughly enjoying the conversations here. It's rare to find a community that appreciates language with such creative exploration and love for the implications found in words chosen. I am new to ZK and taking time to explore the range of understanding, functionality, and freedom found by users of the method. As a new set of eyes, the layers as presented in the blogpost made sense to me, but reading the comments I have also discovered the curious impressions language has made. I wonder if we would think less of a main structure note as being an imposition if we rejected the image mentioned before of file folders and thought more of main structure notes as primary links (avoiding the word master link), or as the tip of an iceberg was mentioned, top-note/ top-tag or...tip-tag . I even looked up the word (English it sounds) for the top of an iceberg, though, it would not help anyone unfamiliar with the word, -hummock. The canopy or crown of a tree comes to mind too, as a meta-view, even as the tree grows from the ground up, we can name the elements that are needed for it to grow. So much fun!
I wonder if we would think less of a main structure note as being an imposition if we rejected the image mentioned before of file folders and thought more of main structure notes as primary links (avoiding the word master link), or as the tip of an iceberg was mentioned, top-note/ top-tag or...tip-tag .
It would be enough if people don't assume that the structure on structure notes is preset. It evolves bottom-up if needed.
Comments
I am a bit late to the party. But a structure note does not impose top-down structure. If you create a structure note it first an empty space with no structure at all:
It is an empty canvas conceptive for any kind of structure. Most of the time, the structure emerges bottom-up.
When I had 25 notes I had an analog Zettelkasten and no clue what any kind of note was. I just have read Luhmann's Communication with Zettelkastens, lived in a one-room-appartment in 2008/2009. It was about the time I started to talk to Christian who at the time used Devon Think.
The first hint of something like a structure note came in 2010/2011 when I processed the book The Perfect Health Diet by Jaminet/Jaminet. This was the first book I processed fully and thoroughly since it was corner stone content to my work back then. It happened when I enriched a note with links and felt in my gut how this note pulled in the content of the other notes. I can't remember though if I showed it Christian later in the day or if I even ran to him (we were neighbors). Our friendhip was fresh, I was way to crazy, Christian way to timid.
I am a Zettler
@Will @Sascha I think it was still in the Holocene, as the glaciers had come and gone
Antediluvian, even! Before the flood of insight
OK now I just have the picture of a puppy and a kitty in a wicker basket.
OK, so we have a baby giant wolf and a baby giant sabre-toothed cat in a cavern...
Biblic creatures? Well, that escalated quickly
@Darryl
wow! over a year to reply! apologies that i have been offline here for sooo long!
i think you have the right of it, darryl: top-down implies that one is creating a structure before one has thoroughly grokked a topic. one can create a zettel that points to other zettels without imposing a hierarchical structure. for example, if i discover an interest in aristotle and suspect that i’m going to dive more deeply into to topic, it would not be unreasonable to create a structure note that points to his ethics vs metaphysics zettels, or to contemporaries such as plato or maybe modern criticism by kant.
i think these are the kind of bottom-up structures that suggest themselves early on and so there is little danger of creating false or erroneous structures.
fabricando fabri fimus
I have been thoroughly enjoying the conversations here. It's rare to find a community that appreciates language with such creative exploration and love for the implications found in words chosen. I am new to ZK and taking time to explore the range of understanding, functionality, and freedom found by users of the method. As a new set of eyes, the layers as presented in the blogpost made sense to me, but reading the comments I have also discovered the curious impressions language has made. I wonder if we would think less of a main structure note as being an imposition if we rejected the image mentioned before of file folders and thought more of main structure notes as primary links (avoiding the word master link), or as the tip of an iceberg was mentioned, top-note/ top-tag or...tip-tag
. I even looked up the word (English it sounds) for the top of an iceberg, though, it would not help anyone unfamiliar with the word, -hummock. The canopy or crown of a tree comes to mind too, as a meta-view, even as the tree grows from the ground up, we can name the elements that are needed for it to grow. So much fun!
It would be enough if people don't assume that the structure on structure notes is preset. It evolves bottom-up if needed.
I am a Zettler
Hi - very new here.
I love the concept of structural layers, especially marking them through ##
But Obsidian doesn't accept ## as tags - only #tags are considered tags.
Please suggest some solutions.
Switch to another app.
I am a Zettler