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Yet another hot take on “folders versus tags”

eleanorkonik.com

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Re: Yet another hot take on “folders versus tags”

#41

Post by bityard »

vannevar wrote: post #29
PaulHoule wrote: post #2

With symlinks (or hard links for that matter) you can have folders work like tags in a real filesystem. That said, binary classification (object A is a member of class B, a function with a boolean truth value) is the basic concept in classification. That is, any classification can be represented correctly with binary classification. There really are a few things where you assign something a category from a finite set…

Is there some reason that a filesystem couldn't be written to permit multiple paths to the same file without the clunkiness of sym links?

Unix has supported multiple paths pointing to the same inode for a very long time. `man ln`.

Re: Yet another hot take on “folders versus tags”

#42

Post by zinekeller »

vannevar wrote: post #29
PaulHoule wrote: post #2

With symlinks (or hard links for that matter) you can have folders work like tags in a real filesystem. That said, binary classification (object A is a member of class B, a function with a boolean truth value) is the basic concept in classification. That is, any classification can be represented correctly with binary classification. There really are a few things where you assign something a category from a finite set…

Is there some reason that a filesystem couldn't be written to permit multiple paths to the same file without the clunkiness of sym links?

(Windows) NTFS has hard links which are multiple pointers to the same file, but I imagine that the strict separation between FSes that made it possible in NT is also the reason why Unix, which has a single arbitrary hierarchy, doesn't have hard links.*

* Yes there are hard links, but the single hierarchy means that unless you memorised the specific FS of each folder, it's gonna be hard.

Re: Yet another hot take on “folders versus tags”

#43

Post by ryanjkirk »

vannevar wrote: post #29
PaulHoule wrote: post #2

With symlinks (or hard links for that matter) you can have folders work like tags in a real filesystem. That said, binary classification (object A is a member of class B, a function with a boolean truth value) is the basic concept in classification. That is, any classification can be represented correctly with binary classification. There really are a few things where you assign something a category from a finite set…

Is there some reason that a filesystem couldn't be written to permit multiple paths to the same file without the clunkiness of sym links?

That would be a hard link, though they can't cross filesystem boundaries.

Re: Yet another hot take on “folders versus tags”

#44

Post by wrycoder »

arsome wrote: post #23
ASalazarMX wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good folder hierarchy is like a library: you know where it is even before you look for it.

Except when you forgot to put it in the right place because you just had to extract it and do that one quick thing... I'd rather not rely on my own willingness to organize files so I'll take a search tool any day.

One needs both. With folders and trees of bookmarks, you can discover stuff you’d forgotten and wouldn’t search for (because you’d forgotten you knew it once :).

This becomes more important as you get older and begin to experience the pleasures of reading things again for the “first” time.

Re: Yet another hot take on “folders versus tags”

#45

Post by fishtacos »

asciimov wrote: post #31

I still want a filesystem that can do both. I want to have regular folders, and then folders that I can issue a SQL style query to generate their contents. Take multimedia. With a traditional file system you can only have one type of sort. Typically by type (audio, video, image) and then alphabetically. It would often be nice to have a folder that is formed by querying the metadata, say all the items released in the…

MS tried it [0] and failed. It was not easy. This was in the days of Whistler, Blackcomb and Longhorn and always an interesting read if you've the time. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS [1] https://hal2020.com/2013/03/10/winfs-integratedunified-stora...

Re: Yet another hot take on “folders versus tags”

#46

Post by mattnewton »

mikestew wrote: post #35
EleanorKonik wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm hosted on Digital Ocean, and the irony is, I'm literally mid-migration to Ghost from Wordpress — if this had happened a week later this wouldn't have happened. I'm trying to figure out how to upgrade the droplet but being honest, my husband is the one who set all this up for me, so it's going to take me a minute to figure out how to add more bandwidth or whatever.

I'm trying to figure out how to upgrade the droplet but being honest, my husband is the one who set all this up for me Yeah, HN can be all "why didn't you just...?" when a site gets hit with traffic, but you know what? I've been in this industry for over 30 years, had a decent stint at Microsoft and other companies you've heard of, working on stuff you've probably used. And if my stupid blog somehow ended up on the f…

This - I've worked fullstack on apps that do unfathomable numbers of connections per second. But for a personal blog the best thing I could muster is probably go to the cloudflare site with my wallet in hand and click around nervously until I figure out how to buy caching from them before it falls off the top page of hacker news.

Re: Yet another hot take on “folders versus tags”

#47

Post by Jarwain »

EleanorKonik wrote: post #24
bacro wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it was so hot, that the database melted.

I'm hosted on Digital Ocean, and the irony is, I'm literally mid-migration to Ghost from Wordpress — if this had happened a week later this wouldn't have happened. I'm trying to figure out how to upgrade the droplet but being honest, my husband is the one who set all this up for me, so it's going to take me a minute to figure out how to add more bandwidth or whatever.

If you want something quick and easy, just sign up for a free account at Cloudflare and hook up their CDN. It's a useful thing to have even when you've switched to WordPress, too.

Re: Yet another hot take on “folders versus tags”

#48

Post by Jarwain »

Jarwain wrote: post #47
EleanorKonik wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm hosted on Digital Ocean, and the irony is, I'm literally mid-migration to Ghost from Wordpress — if this had happened a week later this wouldn't have happened. I'm trying to figure out how to upgrade the droplet but being honest, my husband is the one who set all this up for me, so it's going to take me a minute to figure out how to add more bandwidth or whatever.

If you want something quick and easy, just sign up for a free account at Cloudflare and hook up their CDN. It's a useful thing to have even when you've switched to WordPress, too.

Or, uh, switched to ghost. Although ghost could likely handle it on its own

Re: Yet another hot take on “folders versus tags”

#49

Post by jancsika »

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

With symlinks (or hard links for that matter) you can have folders work like tags in a real filesystem. That said, binary classification (object A is a member of class B, a function with a boolean truth value) is the basic concept in classification. That is, any classification can be represented correctly with binary classification. There really are a few things where you assign something a category from a finite set…

> With symlinks (or hard links for that matter) you can have folders work like tags in a real filesystem.

The word can is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

Tagging system (at least the ones I've seen): enter the tags as autocompleted tokens in a single text entry. Possibly the system can autosuggest a number of tokens, possibly not, depending on your use case.

Symlinks-as-Tagging-System: I want to save a file called "foo.txt" and start editing it immediately. How do I enter the tags?

Re: Yet another hot take on “folders versus tags”

#50

Post by tablespoon »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #15
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #8

After the past 5 years or so of experiencing the supposed best "folderless" computing has to offer on iOS and ideologically similar platforms. I've gained huge respect for how beautiful the concept of the folder is.

Folders are simple, even if tags can imitate them, they can't replace their structure. Tags are a good fit for items that naturally fall into several categories, like music or books, but not for general file systems.

> Folders are simple, even if tags can imitate them, they can't replace their structure. Tags are a good fit for items that naturally fall into several categories, like music or books, but not for general file systems.

This. They're different tools for different jobs. Being a dogmatist and trying to win an us vs them competition on which is the ONE TRUE SOLUTION is stupid. That's like trying to argue which is a better tool, a screwdriver or a pair of pliers, and saying it's stupid to keep a screwdriver in a toolbox. Honestly, in a lot of cases both should be implemented and available.

Stupid reasons pliers are better than screwdrivers:

* There are so many different kinds of screwdrivers; it's too confusing to users.

* Pliers can be used to drive screws, so there's no need for a dedicated screw-driving tool. We've had a lot of success gripping the screw head with pliers and turning.

* Pliers are beautiful and modern, and lots of popular influencers are using pliers now. Screwdrivers are old tech and ugly.

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