When do you use #tags, and when do you use [[wikis]]?

DanielaChM

Hi there!

When I started to build my Zettelkasten I decided to use the [[wiki]] format for everything including "keywords" and links to other notes, because I'm not a big fan of compounded words written in the tag format (e.g., #tidydata, #contentanalysis), for me sometimes it's hard to read, and I just don't like so much the look of it.

Here is an example of how I'm trying to structure my notes.

But I was wondering when do use #tags and when do you use [[wikis]] and if you see some problem on my approach?

Cheers.

Phil

I use tags as an alternate way of giving me access to my ZK. One subject I'm interested in is the consequences of social media use, the attention economy, strategies to resist algorithm-driven attention harvesting and so on, as well as more historically driven info about the spread of digital technology since the '90s. I use a broad tag #virtuality to capture these broadly related notes on a variety of digital-culture-related topics, from high-theoretical to humdrum-historical.

ctietze

I don't like #verylonghashtagnames either, so I usually separate words with a hyphen. That works in most apps I can think of. #even-here-in-the-forums

You can use the [[wiki]] link functionality to write impromptu search shortcuts like you do. That works fine in a couple of plain text apps that support these styles of links. Strictly speaking, a dedicated wiki software (think wikipedia.org) would expect a page with the exact title. So by using this as a clickable search thingie, you're kind of working yourself into a particular corner of [[wiki]]-link convention here. Not that it's a bad thing, but you should be aware of it.

Vinho

@DanielaChM: This discussion might be of interest to you: https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/716/what-do-people-use-tags-for-in-a-zettelkasten

DanielaChM

@Phil said:
I use tags as an alternate way of giving me access to my ZK. One subject I'm interested in is the consequences of social media use, the attention economy, strategies to resist algorithm-driven attention harvesting and so on, as well as more historically driven info about the spread of digital technology since the '90s. I use a broad tag #virtuality to capture these broadly related notes on a variety of digital-culture-related topics, from high-theoretical to humdrum-historical.

Thank you, Phil! Very interesting topics.

DanielaChM

@ctietze said:
I don't like #verylonghashtagnames either, so I usually separate words with a hyphen. That works in most apps I can think of. #even-here-in-the-forums

You can use the [[wiki]] link functionality to write impromptu search shortcuts like you do. That works fine in a couple of plain text apps that support these styles of links. Strictly speaking, a dedicated wiki software (think wikipedia.org) would expect a page with the exact title. So by using this as a clickable search thingie, you're kind of working yourself into a particular corner of [[wiki]]-link convention here. Not that it's a bad thing, but you should be aware of it.

Got it! This is a very helpful characteristic to take into account. I'm not sure if by clicking the [[wiki]], to find all the content related, maybe I could be leaving out some notes not strictly named as the [[wiki]], but that contain that keyword in the text body. Maybe I should run some tests or opt for the #hastag-hyphen-solution.

Thanks Christian!

DanielaChM

@Vinho said:
@DanielaChM: This discussion might be of interest to you: https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/716/what-do-people-use-tags-for-in-a-zettelkasten

Thank you very much, Vinho! I will read this post carefully. Sorry, I did not follow the thread before posting, I did a quick search but there was a lot of content related to wikis and tags.

Vinho

@DanielaChM: No problem, I hope it's helpful. Let me know if you have any insights. I always use WikiLinks to link to individual notes and tags to link to groups of notes. If that group is quite messy in the note list and it is helpful to get an overview over the group first, I create an overview note instead and link to that via a WikiLink. An overview note for a group of notes contains links to the individual notes in that group in a certain order and with descriptions. Most people here call them "structure" notes.