Taxonomy friction: folders vs tags vs properties wastes time
Summary
“Users struggle because folders are rigid and tags/properties are abstract; combining them creates redundancy and forces manual property assignment. People cope by using mixed systems (ditching folders then returning to hybrids). The affected personas include students, writers, and researchers who want a way to classify notes across multiple contexts without duplicative tagging and manual overhead.”
Pain
Organizing notes is taking longer than writing them because folders (rigid) and tags/properties (abstract) conflict; combining systems creates redundancy and forces manual assignment of many properties.
“There are a lot of different ways of organizing notes: folders, properties, bases, and tags. I've tried all of them, and I realized there's one inherent problem: they're all trying to solve each other's problems.”
View source“The core issue is a conflict between rigidity and abstraction. Folders are rigid; they can't handle the reality that a note might belong in multiple places. That forces you to use abstract tags or properties. But combining them creates major redundancies and wastes time, because the folder hierarchy already provides context. You end up manually assigning a ton of extra properties just to categorize things.”
View source“I don't understand how to properly take notes in obsidian or how to structure them correctly. ... I used to think it was normal, but then I sat on Reddit and saw that other people had a graph that was 3-4 times larger than mine after half a year of notes”
View sourceWorkaround
Users try mixed approaches (folders + tags/properties) and manually assign extra properties; some try ditching folders then return to hybrid systems.
“I've tried all of them... People try to ditch folders entirely, only to eventually come back to a mixed system”
View sourcePersona
Obsidian users including students, professional writers, and researchers who need project- or domain-specific note organization.
“More generally for people like students, professional writers, and researchers, or more specifically like creating a mini-wiki for an individual project or business.”
View sourceDesire
A system that avoids redundant manual properties, supports multi-faceted classification without losing folder-provided context, and reduces time spent organizing.
“But combining them creates major redundancies and wastes time... You end up manually assigning a ton of extra properties just to categorize things.”
View source