(2020-11-13) Fast Backlinking Is Not Very Useful, Often Even Harmful

Sascha Fast: Backlinking (Backlinks) Is Not Very Useful -- Often Even Harmful. To me, there is a lot of emphasis on connecting notes and very little on connecting knowledge. My response to the below:

• longer note titles mitigate this some
• backlinks are often a step0, provide linked raw material. Then, when you're gardening an idea, you review many of those, and make your points in the core note you're working on.
• if you find yourself hitting a bunch of backlinks from a particular page multiple times, it's probably a good time to refine it.

connecting conclusions and premises creates arguments which is some kind of knowledge.

Backlinking is a perfect example on how a feature of a program seems to be useful but in reality distracts from that what you actually want to do.

the link context is an explanation on why you should follow a link. A good link context explains what you can expect if you follow the link. But it can also explain the nature of the relationship between both notes.

You will spend time surfing the link structure of your Zettelkasten a lot. You will do it in the context of thinking with your Zettelkasten.

If choice is present, its cousin named “opportunity cost” will be there, too. That means that if you follow one link, you didn’t follow another

Following a link for no good reason is not a productive habit. In fact, this is the habit that makes the internet a productivity killer.

I always say good linking means that you
place any link manually.
give your future self a good reason to follow the link.

The contrasting bad habit is writing “see also:” and just drop the link. If you also mention the title of the note, but only if you named your note appropriately, this would provide minimal context. However, if you link to a number of notes in that manner, the references will blur. Then you have to make the choice that you should have made already when you wrote the note while you read: Why follow this link and not that one over there.