<story><title>Designing better file organization around tags, not hierarchies (2017)</title><url>https://www.nayuki.io/page/designing-better-file-organization-around-tags-not-hierarchies</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>spicybright</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been hearing this for years, but I&amp;#x27;ve never had the mental model for it. Maybe I just have to try it out.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a very neat project (can&amp;#x27;t remember the name, and some details below may be wrong,) that mounts a FUSE filesystem that uses only tags.&lt;p&gt;Paths have identical syntax to hierarchical ones, only each segment of a path is a tag.&lt;p&gt;so `&amp;#x2F;document&amp;#x2F;taxes&amp;#x2F;2020` would return a collection of files, but you could also write `&amp;#x2F;taxes&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;document` and it would mean the same thing.&lt;p&gt;The advantage is you can use standard unix tools like ls, mv, cp, etc. as well as R&amp;#x2F;W using standard programs (like how you&amp;#x27;d export an image.)&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m sure there&amp;#x27;s edge cases to it, but I always found the idea very neat. Anyone remember what I&amp;#x27;m talking about?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tacticalmook</author><text>The downside of folders is trying to figure out where things belong in the hierarchy, or trying to update that hierarchy to a new standard.&lt;p&gt;The downside of tagging is you still need to establish conventions to ensure things can be found again, but enforcement of your conventions is harder.&lt;p&gt;Exploring, learning, and using an unfamiliar folder hierarchy is easier than exploring, learning, and using an unfamiliar tagging methodology.&lt;p&gt;But manually searching for something in somebody else&amp;#x27;s tagged data is easier than manually searching for something in somebody else&amp;#x27;s folders.</text></comment>
<story><title>Designing better file organization around tags, not hierarchies (2017)</title><url>https://www.nayuki.io/page/designing-better-file-organization-around-tags-not-hierarchies</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>spicybright</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been hearing this for years, but I&amp;#x27;ve never had the mental model for it. Maybe I just have to try it out.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a very neat project (can&amp;#x27;t remember the name, and some details below may be wrong,) that mounts a FUSE filesystem that uses only tags.&lt;p&gt;Paths have identical syntax to hierarchical ones, only each segment of a path is a tag.&lt;p&gt;so `&amp;#x2F;document&amp;#x2F;taxes&amp;#x2F;2020` would return a collection of files, but you could also write `&amp;#x2F;taxes&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;document` and it would mean the same thing.&lt;p&gt;The advantage is you can use standard unix tools like ls, mv, cp, etc. as well as R&amp;#x2F;W using standard programs (like how you&amp;#x27;d export an image.)&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m sure there&amp;#x27;s edge cases to it, but I always found the idea very neat. Anyone remember what I&amp;#x27;m talking about?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>webmobdev</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve never had the mental model for it.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is one way to think about the hybrid model of folders + tags that is currently available:&lt;p&gt;1. Folders tell you &lt;i&gt;where&lt;/i&gt; the file is stored.&lt;p&gt;2. Tags tell you &lt;i&gt;what&lt;/i&gt; is the file.&lt;p&gt;So basically use the &lt;i&gt;Tags&lt;/i&gt; to add more data (metadata) about your files, so that if you forget where the file is, you can still search for it by what is in it. This also slightly helps in easing the burden of trying to figure out where to store a file (e.g. &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;Do I put a home video in my &amp;#x27;Videos&amp;#x27; folder or my &amp;#x27;Personal&amp;#x27; folder?&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt; - if you tag it properly, you can put it in either, as you can use the tags to figure out where the video is later).&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;p&gt;1. In Documents folder - &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;mom-2020.xls&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt; (tags =&amp;gt; docs, tax, finance, mom, unfiled).&lt;p&gt;2. In Videos folder - &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;newyear bash.mp4&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt; (tags =&amp;gt; video, family, 2021, home).</text></comment>