I know it has been discussed at length but I wish to share my 2 cents.
If the engine working on the relation between notes shows notes that are absolutely not related then obviously something is not working.
In addition, it does seem that lots of people, including myself would love the ability to perform the action of relating 2 notes themselves.
When working on projects or like myself looking for aork, the same lingo comes again and again, and it seems that this fact makes Agenda to relate notes that wouldn’t be otherwise related.
I love the fact that you guys created a system that, a little like an AI, scans and intuitively relates notes, you can proud.
I do think that lots of people work in lots of different ways and the feature of “note relations” albeit awesome as it is, is understood by people in a variety of ways.
If notes relations are imposed on the user with 0 ways to customise it then in my opinion, it’s a hindrance more than a help.
I know you’ve worked really hard on this but maybe that engine can be redesigned to do something else, and maybe, just a suggestion, let the choice to the user to do it on their own.
Middle ground: instead of connecting 2 notes without the user to know, offer suggestions “here are notes that seem related, would you like to relate them?” with the option of disabling that wizard and let the user do it them selves.
Note that you already have ways to link existing notes. Eg. simply link them using the Link To menu.
Related Notes is not that complex: If two notes share tags or people tags, or a neighbors in a project, they can be related. This seems pretty straightforward, and it also gives you a way to relate two notes: just add the same tag to each.
I think the issue of Agenda relating notes that are not related in the user’s mind is a problem. I expect the related notes panel to help me by showing notes that I am likely to need to refer to when working on the current note.
But when it uses pretty ubiquitous tags like #todo and #next it shows notes that actually aren’t related.
Perhaps the issue will disappear (at least for me) when Agenda includes a tag browser and people browser. I find I use tags less than I would like at the moment because I can’t remember the actual tags I have chosen - #book or #books, @BobDog or @Robert_Dog etc.
I presume the related panel ranks notes by number of related tags? If so, the influence of ubiquitous tags like #next will decline as I use more specific tags more frequently?
It’s true, I had not thought of that of relating notes and that’s indeed a way to solve one of my question about related notes. Thanks for the feedback.
Yes to chime in, the easiest way to “manually relate” two notes is to simply add the same tag in the two notes, that should make them show in the related panel, but also allows to create smart overviews in the sourcelist for these notes for example.