Using LLMs to Search This Forum

GeoEng51

A quick suggestion, which comes mainly from @Sascha and @ctietze ...

There is a "Search Forum" field in the upper right of the forum's web page. I have used it with mixed and often frustrating results over the years.

I was looking for a comment I know I made a couple of years ago, but couldn't find. I hoped I could do some sort of Boolean search in the above field or even in some other search engine, which proved not to be the case (or very limited, in the case of Google). @Sascha and @ctietze recommended pointing an LLM to the forum and asking it to find the comment. This was brilliant!

Here is the question I asked:

"I made a comment on https://forum.zettelkasten.de/ about how I use tags in my Zettelkasten. Can you find it? My username is GeoEng51"

Here's the first part of the ChatGPT response:

I found several posts and comments by your username “GeoEng51” on the Zettelkasten Forum
. The one that most directly matches your description about how you use tags in your Zettelkasten is this thread:

“Question about object tags”

Question about object tags - Zettelkasten Forum

Your detailed comment explains your progressive multi-level tagging approach, for example:

Dams

Dams-Design

Dams-Design-Stability

Dams-Design-Stability-Seismic

You describe how tags become more specific as the number of zettels grows, and how the evolving tag hierarchy becomes “a wonderful index” to the collection."

An idea is brilliant when your own brain has a blind spot and just doesn't see it. Anyway, I thought this suggestion was brilliant and that I'd pass it on to anyone else who is looking for information on the Zettelkasten Forum.

harr

Agree, that LLM are useful. I tried the same request on Perplexity.

Prompt: find all posts by user GeoEng51 on https://forum.zettelkasten.de that describe how GeoEng51 uses tags in a Zettelkasten. Summarize the posts.

Reply:

GeoEng51 has one substantial post on that forum about how he uses tags, where he explains a progressively more specific, multi‑level tag scheme that grows organically as his archive expands.[1]

Where GeoEng51 talks about tags

The relevant material appears in the “Question about object tags” thread; there he describes his personal practice with multi‑level object tags using a dam‑engineering example. In the “What do people use tags for in a zettelkasten?” thread, he only posts a brief thanks to another user and does not describe his own system there.[2][1]

So for your question, there is effectively one detailed description to summarize.[1]

How GeoEng51’s tagging works

GeoEng51 says he uses tags as a kind of evolving index, becoming more specific as the number of notes under a tag grows. He illustrates this with his engineering notes:[1]

• Initially, he had a single tag #Dams for all dam‑related zettels, when there were only about 5–6 notes.[1]
• As more notes accumulated, he split this into three more specific tags: #Dams-Design, #Dams-Performance, and #Dams-Maintenance.[1]

• When #Dams-Design itself became too broad, he split again into:

  • #Dams-Design-Stability
  • #Dams-Design-Seepage
  • #Dams-Design-Consequences[1]

• He anticipates going even further, e.g. #Dams-Design-Stability-Seismic, #Dams-Design-Stability-Rapid_drawdown, #Dams-Design-Stability-Weak_foundation, #Dams-Design-Stability-Construction_defects, etc.[1]

He emphasizes that he does not design a deep hierarchy from the start; he begins with simple tags and only introduces extra “levels” when a tag’s note count grows beyond roughly 5–10 notes and feels too broad. This way, the tag list gradually becomes a detailed, high‑signal index into his Zettelkasten.[1]

Tags vs structure notes in his system

GeoEng51 says he supports structure notes, but in his own Zettelkasten he has “a few structure notes and a lot of (single and multi‑level) tags.” He prefers to create top‑down structure primarily via tags that “grow organically as described above,” and uses structure notes only where they make clear sense. He also notes that one should not be too rigid: sometimes a structure note is best; other times more specific tags are sufficient.[1]

His general tagging strategy, in short

From that post, his practice can be summarized as:

• Start with broad tags for an area where you only have a few notes.[1]
• When a tag accumulates more than about 5–10 notes and becomes unwieldy, split it into more specific, multi‑level tags by adding qualifiers (e.g. -Design, -Design-Stability, -Design-Stability-Seismic).[1]
• Let this process repeat as your archive grows, so the tag list becomes a useful index with varying levels of specificity instead of a small set of over‑loaded topic tags.[1]
• Use structure notes sparingly alongside this tag system, adding them when they clearly add value, but lean on tags for most of the high‑level organization in his own practice.[1]

If you like, I can turn his approach into a concrete tagging “playbook” you could adopt in your own Zettelkasten (with example tags for your domains).

Sources
[1] Question about object tags - Zettelkasten Forum https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2786/question-about-object-tags
[2] Revisiting the (lack of) use of tags in a physical system : r/Zettelkasten https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/nz7e0r/revisiting_the_lack_of_use_of_tags_in_a_physical/
(…)

It doesn't have to be a LLM, though.

I also get good results from Google. In this case I searched for "geoeng51 tags site:forum.zettelkasten.de“. The first search result contained the relevant post.

Personally I get the best results with a combination of a LLM and Google.