• As properties stand now:
  • A tag is a label or series of nested keywords. This age old stalwart does one thing and it does it very well; just like all the other note making and knowledge tools we’ve ever used.
    • In obsidian tags have “baked in” core functionality the other properties don’t yet have; nesting for example and, I suspect, indexing. This is the only non community plugin way to create hierarchies with meta data today; although with careful use of dataview From & Where clauses and properties, you can create them for the output list or table.
    • The other properties have properties (type) just like any object oriented programming language and database. Some of the properties can be containers for other stuff (list and text properties can contain text or links); implied subtype.
• I’ve assigned basic properties to nearly all my notes, but am holding off on anything further until the core database features and functionality is known.
  • Just being able to do this has made my vault incredibly useful, for me, and I’ve re-discovered the value & joy, and distraction, of Dataview.
    • Other than nesting, I’m waiting to see what the difference is between tags and the other properties.
• Why?
  • Currently, all frontmatter pertains to a note. If that is a core design for the future, it will fundamentally change the way I use obsidian; yep, I’ll be forced to atomize:) Not a bad thing, but a huge effort.
    • In my case, I run the risk of over assigning properties and then having to clean them up again. This is an important point to make - consider the effort most of us are now making cleaning up history and with assigning new properties. If we are making the wrong choices now, how much will the effort be when the core database functionality is released?
• I am an Obsidian lifer because of the community. But I feel like the team needs to present some direction and guidance in this area. This is a significant inflection point.