Specificity of "top level" categories

marick

I'm following Bob Doto's advice and using Luhmann's numbering scheme, which in effect imposes a tree structure on top of a more free-form linking structure. My top-level titles are weird:

• 1.5: The brain is expensive.
• 3.3: Republic of Letters letters were often sent multi-hop
• 4.3: Russian fairy tales are constructed from linearly organized event types.
• 7.1: What does the abstraction abstract away?
• 14.1: People hate negativity.
• 15.1: Socialism aimed to change the environment in order to change mankind.

(All my top-level titles – as PDF)

This is reminiscent of nothing so much as Borges' top-level classification of animals, supposedly taken from the (imaginary) Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge:

• those belonging to the Emperor
• embalmed ones
• trained ones
• suckling pigs
• mermaids (or sirens)
• ...
• those that have just broken the vase
• those that from afar look like flies

I'm wondering if this is typical. I'm happy enough with it, to the point I consistently use that list when I start to decide where to put new notes. I have a keyword index from jargon words to notes, but I don't use it. (It may be relevant that I have only 284 main notes.)

(It may also be relevant that I started my Zettelkasten mostly by taking my unfinished drafts, extracting their claims, and loading them into the Zettelkasten. But when I take notes on other people's texts, I still tend to put highest whatever's first in my Inbox today. Maybe I should scan my Inbox and do the most abstract claims first?)

Mauro

I think they are fairly normal, especially in an early stage.

Some of my titles:

• 202509181619-definition-of-direct-address-tables
• 202510061623-using-induction-to-prove-the-complexity-of-algorithms
• 202509232012-difficulty-in-a-text-arises-from-the-readers-competency-in-relation-to-the-text
• 202510011111-determine-what-ideas-are-worthy-to-be-fully-developed

marick

@Mauro Thank you.

zettelsan

I've been experimenting with Folgezettel (essentially the numbering scheme Bob Doto introduces in his book) for a while.

The biggest frustration with this method is organizing top-level categories. Although it claims to be non-hierarchical, it inevitably introduces an order that feels like a hierarchy, no matter what you call it.

One strength of Folgezettel, as presented in Bob's book, is that it naturally lets relationships emerge. As you create (child) notes, those at the same level of numbering depth effectively cluster around an emergent topic.

This works well, except for top-level categories. You increment the most significant digit when you encounter a topic unrelated to existing notes, starting a new tree. Later, as your Zettelkasten matures, you might realize a better position for that note based on connections that have developed since it was written. The temptation to refile the note arises, but actually doing so creates all sorts of problems.

This complexity makes me sympathize with the view that Folgezettel is just a distraction.

ctietze

@marick At the beginning, it is weird that way. Thanks for the funny Borges reference, I never connected these

But it won't matter much in the long run as the heterarchy grows and the placement becomes less important. You need to start somewhere, so there's no avoiding weird 'top level' notes for a while, until 'top level' stops being associated with "things that were there first". (I don't use positional, hierarchical ID's for many reasons discussed on this forum.)

baux

bob doto in his book absolutely doesn't suggest use of "semantic hierarchy" but a "train of idea sequence style. I took some time to understand this point, hierarchy isn't semanticaly relevant. Hub and structure note are sematically relevant in bob doto zettelkasten declination

Sascha

@baux said:
bob doto in his book absolutely doesn't suggest use of "semantic hierarchy" but a "train of idea sequence style. I took some time to understand this point, hierarchy isn't semanticaly relevant. Hub and structure note are sematically relevant in bob doto zettelkasten declination

@marick Is making a different statement from Bob suggesting a hierarchy. To stealman your position a little bit: Bob repeatedly insist that Folgezettel mustn't be seen as some form of hierarchy.

@marick is making a factual statement:

@marick
I'm following Bob Doto's advice and using Luhmann's numbering scheme, which in effect imposes a tree structure on top of a more free-form linking structure.

So, while Bob is making an either a possibilistic statement ("doesn't necessary mean"), a normative statement ("mustn't be used for"), or (which would be the appropriate case) both to make his point, the other position is that Folgezettel does in fact impose a hierarchical structure.

You may read this article to explore the relationship of Folgezettel and hierarchy: https://zettelkasten.de/posts/understanding-hierarchy-translating-folgezettel/

marick

When I was referring to tree structure, I meant no more than that:

1. Every note (except a topmost one) will have a "parent" node.
2. Most notes will have "siblings".

A hierarchy, I think, implies something more: that there are rules determining where a new note should go – rules more rigid than "it seemed like an interesting linkage to make at the time."

I like using the 1.3a3b style as a failsafe measure. Some times I'll put notes in the notebox without adding enough links. Yes, over time, encountering that note again, I'll adjust the links on it. In the meantime, the tree structure means I'll (almost) always have implicit links to neighbors that stand a good-enough chance of being interestingly related to the note I'm looking at.

And a habit of running through my top levels before I decide where to put the note helps keep me from lazily making the first link on the new note something obvious.

I've made too many mistakes in my life to depend on myself always doing my best. "Suspenders and belt," we say in the States.

Nick

@zettelsan couldn't you just copy/paste the existing note into the new, more appropriate spot, delete the contents of the note in the old spot and place a link to the new spot?

I believe Luhmann created top level categories at some point with his department overview. Seems like that is what is needed.

My intuition says that folgezettel is more so just a distraction more because it solved a problem with the limitations of physical systems. With digital systems, it is every easy to structure sets of ideas on the fly, so an elaborate numbering system isn't needed.

zettelsan

@Nick said:
@zettelsan couldn't you just copy/paste the existing note into the new, more appropriate spot, delete the contents of the note in the old spot and place a link to the new spot?

This is a good way to deal with the situation especially with analog zettelkastens. With digital zettelkastens, you have an option to change note ID and make global edits on all the links referencing the obsolete ID. I think that’s personal aesthetics.

While I can sympathize with the view that folgezettels are just a distraction, they do have semantic benefits in that folgezettels with the same prefix from a cluster of notes around an “emergent” topic that you didn’t explicitly attempt to create. You can achieve the same thing with well-maintained structure notes, but with folgezettels, prefix search is an alternative way and can help you with serendipitous discovery. And serendipity can result in interesting connections.

JasperMcFly

Once you realize that ideas in a Zettelkasten are meant to exist in a heterarchy, you will not worry so much about trees, hierarchies, topics and categories. The numbering is a convention to find the idea again. Numbering also allows local fitting-placing a new note behind the one it most relates to.

s41f

All this talk about the purpose of folgezettel seems tangential to @marick’s original request for advice but @Sascha’s article on structure notes does much to settle the questions about folgezettel and what's referenced in Bob Doto’s book. But the recourse to structure notes is appropriate and justifies why talk about folgezettel and order is being raised.

I’m not sure where the phrase “semantic hierarchy” originated from in this discussion but I get how folgezettel may be interpreted as one depending on how you make sense of the word “semantic” relative to how folgezettel is supposed to work.

The ID is supposed to signify something...just not in relation to actual order, but proximity. Sascha’s term “meaningless hierarchy” addresses this well.

As you can see, at no point is there a meaningful use of the hierarchy that was created by the Folgezettel technique. There is no meaning in the Folgezettel hierarchy on purpose. It is just another connection.

I hope the passages that come before the quote above also support what I’m trying to say...

Perhaps some of us are misinterpreting what @marick meant when he said that Bob Doto referred to folgezettel as a tree structure “in effect”. And it is one. Just not for most of our purposes. Luhmann’s use of folgezettel can be represented as a tree structure but that wasn’t his intention. The purpose of Niklas Luhmann Archive is to show off just that, his archive—not his method. Doto refers to this case as the “tree structure fallacy”, but only from the perspective of notetakers and not the note archivists of Luhmann’s collection.

Folgezettel is not meant to portray an ordered procession of ideas. It’s just a useful way to approximate the location of a note and like @marick says it also affords you with the healthy friction of having to think about where a note goes and what it relates to as you compose it. It’s an approach analogous to how we think. A swing in the thinking environment for those interested in having one there.

However the sheer assembly of notes possessing these “semantic identifiers” portraying “meaningless hierarchy” and even hyperlinks in a note’s body do not satisfy the need to make sense out of all the atoms in your zettelkasten beyond what you may have arrived at within the contents of the individual note.

Amalgamating atomic notes is a necessary practice in the slipbox. So is building structure and sense out of them. This is where the following article becomes useful: https://zettelkasten.de/posts/three-layers-structure-zettelkasten/

Folgezettel cannot [...] enrich certain link patterns with meaning. The only thing they could establish is a connection. That is the problem with the Folgezettel-Technique. If you think that you do something other than apply a technique that generates an ID for a Zettel you will be mislead.
As the discussion about Folgezettel re-emerges in the forums, an argument is coming up: Structure Zettel require some understanding about the nature of the connection between the Zettel. The Folgezettel-Technique enables you to postpone the connection. There is an assumption that there is a connection, and its meaning of it can be discovered later.

Emphasis my own.

The only thing I would provoke Sascha about is the amount of pencil and rubber Luhmann would run through in devising his own structure notes. Could he have expanded on a method similar to John Locke's? Or was the excess pencil shaving and erasing spent on his second zettelkasten?

Anyway, @marick I’m not sure if the lists you shared all belong to a single document or not. But you might as well break them up into structure notes if that’s the case. Then yes, I’d find what you’ve put together so far to be “typical” and you may find yourself doing away with the keyword index altogether.

HTH