I don’t follow, I’m sorry.
These are pages with my notes about these articles.
So the main article text is not on the page except for citations I want to keep. All citations don’t contain links.
All notes I make do contain links.
The page is about a certain subject, so it is linked to said subject.
So here’s basically what happens. I have read the article “Introduction to the Zettelkasten Method” (article 1). I copied some highlights into Logseq and made some additional notes for myself. I gave the page subject:: Zettelkasten.
Later I read the article “Folgezettel is More than Mechanism” (article 2). I did the same for this article, highlights, notes and subject:: Zettelkasten.
Later I was reviewing (for one reason or another) my notes on article 1 and it made me think of what I read in article 2.
This let me to write the note on the page of article 1. “There is more to it than that, see [[Folgezettel is More than Mechanism]]” In response to the citation about the unique id used in Zettelkasten.
This leads to connections between both articles and each to subject Zettelkasten.
What in your opinion should it look like instead?
I was trying to cover multiple cases, but your description helps me focus.
Here is what leverage is about:
The load is a concept.
The beam is a connection.
The fulcrum is a note.
But these work only in a proper configuration.
To leverage a concept, should link it to another one through a note, but at the proper place. Here is the important convention (in two equivalent wordings):
When the configuration doesn’t follow the convention, the notes are leveraging nothing:
Your pages are currently named after the title of the articles.
But which is the concept of each one of them?
The topic in the title?
Too long for a concept.
The article itself?
That could have some usage, but it is obviously not the case.
Your take on the article itself?
Could also have some usage, but also not the case.
The article’s take on the topic in the title?
Basically its highlights, but they are not proper notes.
Your take on the article’s take on the topic in the title?
Those are proper notes, but by now the concept has become elusive.
An external linked subject?
Then the notes are not at the proper place.
They are instead near the place of their origin.
This is like putting them in a journal, i.e.:
near the time of their origin
in a place where their links accumulate noise
Also like connecting journals to each-other.
Should rather link to concepts.
That leads to triangles of subject, article and third nodes.
Putting them initially and temporarily there, is not a problem.
But to limit the noise, should gradually move each note to the page of its subject-concept.
Not the subject (actually object) of the article, but the subject of each note.
That way the links spread, reducing the noise.
This is where the notes can provide leverage.
When all the notes about an article get moved, it can be hidden.
Unless we model the article itself, it doesn’t belong to the graph.
Ah yes that makes sense.
Some advanced modeling though as compared to where I am currently.
I would say for me as a first step would be to seperate my notes from the article’s page.
If I need the articles text I can reference it. (Block reference, which would not show in the graph)
I think the hardest part would be to consider the “correct” concept.
I interpret this, that in the same logic a concept also does not need to be final.
What seems like an appropriate concept today may be broken up later.
This would help me avoid never starting at all.
I have noticed in the past I would like a reference to where my notes came from.
In the context of this comment of yours I feel my earlier idea of using block references (or embeds) might be an appropriate way.
It would not create links, and in that way the article is hidden. It would still be possible to go from my note to the underlining source.
I can add to the article page an exclude from graph property.
I feel that highlights belong on the article page, hidden and available at the same time. The expansion on those highlights could then live on the page of the appropriate concept.
That’s something I can definitely work with. And also that’ll take some work
(As you may have noticed, I’m just thinking out loud here to process what you’re saying)
I have been enjoying this process thoroughly. Seeing things improve, both my thoughts and understanding as well as my graph structure.
So thank you very much for taking the time to enlighten me. This has been so much more helpful than everything I’ve read as we were able to discuss some specific things.
I’d like to end this topic with a little before / after comparison.
I’m not done at all, but I’ve made some great changes and notice my ideas and mindset evolving and growing.
Right now here’s where I am. I’m working on trimming away connections and later I’ll be working more on new deliberate ones. So yes lots of unconnected pages for now.
I brought back the game cluster (at the bottom), but it is no longer connected to hobby. Opting to split it to type:: game and hobby gaming. That made sense to me keeps the graph more clear too.
There a lot of mini-graphs and floating pages. But that is a much better starting point than the tangled mess from the beginning.
(and yes I had to drag things around a lot to get it to look this nice :P)
I wanted to come back and give another update
I’ve been working on more deliberate connections and working on connecting things without them.
One thing I learned that it is best to link a page to the most specific related page as possible. As a good example, I would link near everything to “health”.
So you have this really big star with all these branches. But it is totally unhelpful.
So here’s my graph now. The red area is all connected. The white circle is my health page
I’ve been going through my references and trying to split the notes and quotes. Moving the notes to appropriate places.
I’m discovering notes with ideas about how I did things, how I might do things etc. These notes are often obsolete now due to new insights. Instead of having been useful notes, they got lost.
Doing this made me realize/solidified the above point a lot better.
I like this suggestion. However, doesn’t this nullify all the aspiring users who want to use Logseq for “Book Notes” (that is, creating a new page for a whole book, for example, a page with the name [[What Has Government Done to Our Money]] for taking notes and quotations from the famous book of [[Murray Rothbard]]) ?
Something to consider, what are you making the note for? What is its purpose?
This topic is about making use of links in Logseq, to leverage its potential for discovery.
If you don’t have proper links, you discover nothing. If your graph is a mess like mine was, you discover nothing.
For this specific piece I now do the following.
I have an article page with citations on it. This page never has any links except to its subject.
When I want to make notes on or reference a citation, I’ll go to the proper place. At first for ease of use and quickness this can be the article page. However at the end these notes go to the page of their subject.
Notes are not static, they can move. I first had some notes on Zettelkasten, but I was accumulating a lot of ideas and information on Folgezettel. So I gave that its own page and moved my notes. Linked the page to Zettelkasten as a concept that is part of Zettelkasten.
Here’s some screenshots to visually show the above.
The first quote block is a quote used in the article as the article is about another article. The second is my own, a visual indicator I used this citation as a quote someplace. This gives an easy view of what citations I actually did something with other than just record.
I’m still working on this page, so I’ve listed some tasks with references I want to further process here.
Also notice that in my note at the bottom I use a reference and not a page link for Introduction to the Zettelkasten Method. The reference goes to a specific part of that articles page. As the article is about more than Folgezettel, a page link would pollute the graph. I want to reference it, but not link it, so a block reference seemed appropriate.
Since the note is in Dutch, to clarify Introduction to the Zettelkasten method makes a point on unique ID’s and that Folgezettel is one method for this. Folgezettel is more than mechanism makes a counter point to that. And that’s what I recorded in my note.
Let’s keep this thread for leveraging and Graph view. Answers on books here.
Most people don’t find out as early as you did. They hope that the tool will somehow make sense of their notes and provide insight. But the tool merely outputs what was fed with (like recent AI technology). As outlined in the accepted answer:
Yeah. When I started watching YT content about logseq (from Ramses, and Tools on Tech mainly) the thing they hammered-home was “just write everything into journal. a structure WILL EMERGE by itself, as you keep using it.”
I’ve been trying to keep this topic in mind the past months. Today was a big clean up/changing structure day for me. I’m quite pleased with the changes I’ve made.
Mostly changing where certain notes live and page structure and relationship consequences of it.
More relationships between pages (through paths) have emerged and it’s been a lot of fun browsing through my graph today. It felt useful. Helping me see where I could improve structure and information. Helping me and my future self to find things.
Nice crab constellation. I would put more effort on the left part of the Graph view:
Not to change the links, but to re-arrange the nodes, in order to study the network with less intersections.
Yeah I spend a good amount of time there. I cannot get Logseq to play nice with that section honestly. It has a lot of cross linking.
I have the following pages in there:
sick leave
sick leave/1
sick leave/2
company doctor
job
employer
With connections:
sick leave to job
sick leave to 1 & 2 because of namespace.
sick leave/1 and sick leave/2 to employer
sick leave/1 and sick leave/2 to company doctor
job to employer
job to company doctor
Reasonings:
when working (job) I may get sick and this may result in extended sick leave
Specific sick leave happens when working for a specific employer
Specific sick leave results in contact with a company doctor
company doctor is generally defined in my graph, so not specific to employer as that connection runs through specific sick leave already
working (job) will be done for a specific employer
working (job) may involve sick leave (general)
Currently only company doctor as a page doesn’t have content.
It is mainly used to write notes about company doctor appointments in my journal. So that I can then query for it to get a list of past appointment notes.
Or any notes I made for the next appointment.
That results in that top cross linking.
The same type of thing is happening downward.
Probably this one. I still have that sick leave and company doctor belong under the umbrella of work. But I removed the actual link.
Job position is I guess folded into employer. I don’t have enough notes to warrant separate pages. That is to say, I don’t have any job position specific notes.
Red section is the one we were discussing a section of.
Much better overall I think.
Edit, again:
Always fun when you add new pages to the mix. Adding extra sick leave will get to the graph structure. However for query purposes I wanted some connection from my sick leave to company doctor. I solved that now using a link between general sick leave and company doctor and then a block reference on the specific sick leave pages.
Here’s what the graph looks like now: (also two new bonus pages for completeness)
keeps the graph more clear too.
