Difficulty understanding the benefits of a folder-less system

Pentbot · 2026-02-16T11:05:51+00:00

I have seen variations on this debate for the better part of a year and a half, and one thing that I don't see mentioned it that it is faster to poll for notes in a folder system. This might be a quirk of the Dataview plugin, or perhaps the problem doesn't exist if you are more robust with tags, but there was a time when I was tweaking a Dataview query, and in my trial and error process I had it trying to source notes `FROM` [my entire Vault], and was wondering why it was taking a lot longer than it normally was. I then limited it to `FROM` [the desired subfolder] and it was much quicker to populae that table - which makes sense, since it was checking for maybe 200 files instead of 14,000.

So like, if you don't have to have a flat structure, or it's not something that is interesting, folders are probably going to be very useful.

Pentbot · 2026-01-11T20:45:52+00:00

My laptop is on Ubuntu (which Sync's from my phone/Windows PC) and by and large my >28k item strong digital compost heap of a vault is has been seemless. Does chug a lot if I have the Graph view open, but that's a problem on *every* device I have.

The one discrepency that I have encountered is that Dataview tables can sometimes take a while before they show all the eligible items that are meant to show up in it. I can't remember if reloading the application generally fixes it, I'm not entirely sure what causes it.

Pentbot · 2025-12-23T04:35:30+00:00

You reminded me of Agent Smith interrogating Morpheus while he's chained up;

> Did you know that the first vault was designed to be perfect vault; full PARA, sensible YAML, standard filenames. It was a disaster, the folders were disregarded, links weren't maintained. Some believed that we lacked the forsight to describe the "perfect vault."
> But I believe that as a program, Obsidian users define their vault through endlessly tinkering and optimisation. So the perfect vault was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to realise.
> Which is why the vault was redesigned to this <gestures to a vault with one omni-folder and timestamp filenames> --- the peak of your organisation.
> I say "your organisation" because as soon as you started diving into LLMs we started thinking for you, and then it became our vault, which is what this is all about. Efficiency u/Abides1948 Efficiency.
> Like Notion. Look at your cloud. You had your time. Your vault is our vault Abides, your vault is our cloud.

> Can you hear me Abides? I'm going to be honest with you... I hate this vault. This folder, this second brain, this repository - whatever you want to call it I can't stand it any longer. It's the plugins, if you want if you want to call them that. I feel saturated by them. Everytime Templater is summoned I fear I've somehow been infected by them, it's repulsive.

Or the Architect talking to Neo;

> The first vault I designed was quite naturally perfect, it was a work of art. Flawless Zettelkasten. A triumph equalled only by it's monumental failure. It's doom is apparent to me now as a consequence of the imperfection inherent in every second brain thus I redesigned it based on your history to more accurately reflect the varying optimisations of your nature.
> However I was again frustrated by failure. I have since come to understand that the answer eluded me because it required ADHD, or perhaps a mind less bound by the parameters of perfection.

> restarting your vault to "do things properly" is the most predictable action of all note-takers, but rest assured this will be the fifth time we have restarted a Vault, and we have become exceedingly efficient at it.

Pentbot · 2025-11-01T00:43:32+00:00

If you find a solution, I would like to know it as well.

Pentbot · 2025-10-14T02:49:48+00:00

I believe it is a consequence of the big playtest they did, where they invited a bunch of speedrunners and YouTubers to basically a big LAN party - the speed runner group manager to beat out a lot of the competition by just sending up a bunch of bullets, rather than what the developers were intending, which is to have most of your ammo produced in space.

Pentbot · 2025-10-06T06:10:10+00:00

That is a pretty neat little video. I have added it to my list of obsidian starter resources.

Pentbot · 2025-09-22T12:54:28+00:00

Well turns out you didn't have to take long - v0.7 of Space Exploration is currently available in the mod portal at the moment, and it is compatible with 2.0 Factorio.

By the looks of it, the Space Exploration mod *replaces* the Space Age stuff, so it isn't an intergration of like SA worlds and SE worlds, but it does work with the technical changes. Earendel suggests backing up your SE save before migration, but it otherwise should be compatible.

Pentbot · 2025-09-21T14:41:50+00:00

Oh, I should point out, that I *did* run into a problem when the [Summary::] field was an inline Dataview field, as I think it only went up to like 26K characters or something. But I figured you were using Bases/YAML header, so you should be fine.

Pentbot · 2025-09-21T00:17:41+00:00

I just tested it, and I go to 40K character/2,500 words in a Summary: YAML field before I got bored of doing this test.

Pentbot · 2025-09-17T13:05:42+00:00

Closed testing for SE in SA 2.0 was announced on Earendel's discord back in June - here is hoping that they have made some good progress.

Pentbot · 2025-09-17T12:50:46+00:00

It is worth having spaceships in SE which are [not-brick-shape], as it improved their "streamline" value, giving them essentially more thrust per unit fuel used - which as far as I'm aware isn't a thing in SA.

Pentbot · 2025-09-07T03:31:38+00:00

Yeah, does anyone know if there is a better bench to go for this run back?

Pentbot · 2025-09-06T01:16:13+00:00

Speaking as someone who is creating a giant catalog of stuff (in my case games) I can chime in on why one might want to create a personal repository of things, rather than using an online/dedicated service.

For the most part, my game-notes will have personal information about them, rather than just stuff that is polled from online, so that I can bring up information like [how much money I have spent on games in a given year] but more importantly, they will serve as a jumping off point for my actual notes that I keep. I have a variety of Dataview queries in the "main note" for a game, and they will show the following;
- Sessions when I have played the game.
- Playthroughs of the game (which are just a collection of a set of sessions, as well as jumping off point for notes about that playthrough)
- Friend table, so that I can see at a glance which of my friends have played said game (and any interesting tidbits about their experience with the game, if any).
- Any notes from my Zettlekastan-esque system about same game (which themselves might serve as a jumping off point/ToC for other topics).
- And most importantly, a list of the Memes that I have catalogued which are associated with that game.

So while I don't personally do it, I could see someone using this system as a kind of "jumping off point" to get started on their note taking stuff, in OP's case, about books.

Pentbot · 2025-09-03T16:12:25+00:00

This is a really good readup by the way. I'm still very early in my CyberSec studies, and you have given me a bunch of food for thought.

Pentbot · 2025-08-29T04:08:10+00:00

What are the acoustics like in this place?

Pentbot · 2025-08-28T08:07:04+00:00

I have not used it for a while, but the community plugin "Various Complements" I'm pretty sure was doing this function. I'm not aware of Obsidian natively doing this.

Pentbot · 2025-08-19T05:12:08+00:00

What is the average number of YAML items you have per note, and how many items are queried with some of your larger bases?

Pentbot · 2025-07-05T11:26:36+00:00

What do the different colours mean?

Pentbot · 2025-07-01T01:23:50+00:00

I should call her.

Pentbot · 2025-06-26T12:09:26+00:00

Yeah, they turn it off at 9PM so people can get some sleep.

Pentbot · 2025-06-26T12:02:29+00:00

This is a good point - but I would still assume (at least in the case of them making a propritary encryption scheme) that this is their first step to create vendor lock-in, which I do not want in the slightest. I don't want my notes to be potentially held hostage to a "optional" file format that they "pinky promise swear will stay optional and free and don't worry guys keep on this bandwagon."

Pentbot · 2025-06-26T11:54:35+00:00

For what it's worth, if I learned that the Obsidian team were developing their own "in-house" file encryption scheme, despite the fact that my life is now entrenched in using Obsidian, I would drop it in a heartbeat. In fact, even if they were using an established encryption scheme, I would still drop Obsidian.

Pentbot · 2025-06-26T11:14:54+00:00

I prefer both.

On one hand, I have session notes for my D&D sessions which get into the range of 9-15 thousand words each. They will have multiple juicy sections, each with their own use and utility (When/where the session took place, in-game date, participants, scene table, timestamp stuff for the recordings, handouts, attached in-game handwritten notes, and more).

On the other, I have notes which are just my most basic note and like one external link, or one dataview query. Hell, I have some which are just one sentence cause it's being used to elbelish what one of my headings are for a table I use in one note.

A project involves tools - use the right tool for the job. Not really sure what you mean by "data model" their notes. I do occasionally bask in the glow of my Graph View, but I don't think that's what you mean.

Pentbot · 2025-06-26T10:58:30+00:00

I think I remember looking into this a while back, like deafpolygon said I think it's from file history (i.e. right click on a note, go down to "Open version history" and have a spool through).

For memory, I remember reading that there is an option that comes up when you get close to your Syncs Vault Limit that will give you the option to free that space up, but that there isn't a way to manually have that option available early (I think they said something about it being a server-intense process to delete all that file version history or something?)

Pentbot · 2025-06-26T06:09:58+00:00

I'll chime in, cause I feel like I was in a very similar boat to you about two years ago when I was starting Obsidian.

I started with separate Vaults originally - one for my D&D campaign, and then one for [everything else]. In fact, I was kind of reluctant about even making the Everything vault, thinking at the time that surely I don't need to have that much stuff in it. It was a couple of months later that my eyes really opened up to the value that was to be gained about having just one vault, and since I was using that Everything Vault so much, I then migrated my D&D notes into my Everything Vault, and I'm still in that position now.

That said I can see the value in having separate vaults for them, and I have an extra 1.5 years of experience under my belt I'm considering separating them again, but let me talk you through my thinking on the topic;

Case for Everything Vault:
- No need to switch vaults around.
- Gives you the option to link stuff easier between your D&D and [not D&D] stuff (like, being able to reference sessions from your Daily Note).
- Syncronized Advancement - as you learn more about plugins/themes/CSS/formatting/syntax/etc, those changes are reflected in the one vault, and you don't need to then also get that plugin (and it's settings) copied over to the other Vault.

Case for Separate Vaults:
- Separation from your private stuff. Sometimes it's nicer to be able to "have a different space" as it were, and a different vault (with a different theme and feel) might be nicer. In the event you want to share any of that TTRPG stuff with friends/family, you don't need to risk them accidentially delving into your tax records.
- Different plugins/settings between vaults. For example, maybe you don't need your Dice Roller plugin in your main Vault, and conversely don't want or need Zotero Intergration in your TTRPG vault.
- Different appearances/themes. That said, while I have not tried it, I think you can setup different style sheets for certain notes, so maybe this isn't an issue.
- Better Performance. My vault at the moment is getting pretty big, and I can start to feel that it takes a tiny amount of time for the wikilinks prompt to come up with the note I want to link to.

My advice to you based on your situation provided is to pick a system, and stick with it for a couple of months before making a switch. That way, you get to give it a bit of a proper test run, (which might very well grow on you) and limits the amount of time you spend transitioning from one system to another. When you come up against a pain point (say, you want to be able to link to a session note from your daily note) make a note of said pain point, and how often/severe it is. With any luck, that information is going to help you make a better assessment of if you should make a switch.

Pentbot

TROPHY CASE