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Restructuring Old Notes (self.obsidianmd)

submitted 1 year ago by Arxir to c/obsidianmd

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When reinventing the wheel and coming up with a new clever way to structure notes or new info to add to the YAML, how do you treat your old notes?

Do you go back and apply the new format or do you just leave them as is only looking forward?

If you revisit old notes, do you have a strategy?

I would love to hear your thoughts and opinions.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is definitely one of those questions that's hard to give a definitive answer to. It really depends on what you're using the YAML for and whether not having it on all relevant notes would prevent you from accomplishing your goal.

Let's say I have my watched movies in Obsidian. I have basic YAML like IMDB link, genre, and year released. Later, I decide I want to see what directors I have watched the most. In this instance, not having the director YAML on all of my movies is something I would want to fix.

Continuing the above example, I would do two things to make adapting the new structure easier. First, I would update my template for movies to automatically include that field for any new movies I create. Second, I would probably use Dataview to create a utility page to identify movies with no director. The logic of the query would basically be "select all from movies where no director". That way I could systematically update my existing notes without having to look through all of them individually.

Hopefully this gives you a couple of ideas. If you have any follow-up questions, let me know!

[–] Arxir 2 points 1 year ago

Thank you! This is pretty much how I go about it, but the manual work load is still great.

In my case it is the adoption of LATCH, a concept I only encountered after I had already been using Obsidian for some time. Not to mention that my LATCH template already changed once or twice, until I found what works for me, but this still leaves the possibility open for future changes to it and another round of mass edits. Deciding on a more fundamental level, if and how or if at all I should address these changes is a question that I have not yet found a decisive answer to.