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> But I don't get your point about a missing tag. At least in my experience, interfaces that use tags (Gmail, Google Docs prior to the Drive upgrade) end up be

> But I don't get your point about a missing tag. At least in my experience, interfaces that use tags (Gmail, Google Docs prior to the Drive upgrade) end up being a massive global heap that make it impossible to find anything. Tags help but only marginally, and only when I'm very selective about applying them. When a tag becomes too big it, it's just the soup problem all over again. In my experience with Gmail/Docs I usually find things via search, or not at all (and unfortunately more often than not the latter). You could argue the same problem occurs in hierarchical folders. But I think one major takeaway I've had is that defaults matter: hierarchical folders normalize a usage where you categorize everything. Therefore, I can find utility bills for an apartment I moved out of some years ago, with about four clicks through my folder tree. As another example, a while back I was asked for my daughter's birth certificate when checking in for a flight. No problem, five clicks and I've got it on my phone. In my experience this is hopeless in a tagging system unless search is very good or the tags are hierarchical and very granular, and at least so far I've never been able to develop the discipline to do this.

burtonator 8y ago
I mean a document with no tags is just like sticking something in / Plus, with tags you can have multiple categories. Also, Polar suggest tags for you based on your history. So it gets smarter over time. We will probably add some sort of hierarchy viewer but I'm torn over whether it should be compiled based on the tags or built manually.
- eslaught 8y ago
  I just went to your website and saw this screenshot: https://getpolarized.io/assets/screenshots/document-repository.png https://getpolarized.io/assets/screenshots/document-reposito... This is exactly what I'm talking about. Tags may be supported but it's not a tag-first interface, per se. When I open finder/explorer/nautilus on my computer, what shows up is the top level of my file hierarchy. This would be like an interface where you showed only top-level tags and then you have to click through one of those to get to any actual documents. You can say this increases friction, but the tradeoff is that it promotes a system of organization that becomes faster overall when I have large numbers of documents. Or again, the issue of uncategorized files: you say it's like saving a document in /, but when I save a file on my local machine it doesn't put it in / first and then as a second step I have to manually put it somewhere else. But that's how most tagging systems work: documents go into the soup of the untagged list by default, I have to manually tag it if that's what I care about. Again, it's normalizing an approach where you dump things in and organize them later except the second step usually doesn't happen. Like I said before, it's not that I don't think tagging could be used with discipline to maintain organization, it's that systems that rely on tagging tend to design their interfaces in a way where tagging is at most an afterthought and often isn't done at all. Whereas on my desktop I literally can't save a file without putting it somewhere in the file hierarchy, and the UI is designed to put that hierarchy front and center.
  - burtonator 8y ago
    Ah! That screenshot is out of date. https://i.imgur.com/hXizVHG.png https://i.imgur.com/hXizVHG.png Tags are now front and center and on by default in the UI. You can easily filter by tag too: https://i.imgur.com/9N5ZMi6.png https://i.imgur.com/9N5ZMi6.png Polar 2.0 will be web based ... there have been thousands of people checking out the website but not many people downloading the app. Had it been web based I don't think that would have been an issue. I think they would have started using it. > it doesn't put it in / first and then as a second step I have to manually put it somewhere else. no.. but it will pick either the users home or their Documents or their Downloads. That's not much better.
- SquishyPanda23 8y ago
  > Also, Polar suggest tags for you based on your history. So it gets smarter over time. You may want to be careful with this. It sounds like it will lead to a small number of tags becoming increasingly massive to the point where they are basically useless and it is difficult to find anything.
dare2deviate 8y ago
1. 100% agree. Tags based solution is non-started at scale. 2. Problem is pretty much all such apps today require you to be a methodical type-writer/curator on some system-of-record application. Hierarchical structures are only as great as your personal hygiene of maintaining them. 3. This is in no way a critique for Polar. I think its a novel effort but I believe we need something significantly better to be universally effective. 4. I am an aggressive user of Evernote and the best use I have gotten is type a keyword X in the global search and see what pops up from my personal knowledge graph. It's always this painful search (pull model of information) which only as good as your own hierarchy or note keeping or tagging. 5. Out of my own pain, I have started working on a project I called Kontext. Think of it as your personal knowledge graph in the cloud but you don't have to categorize or organize or tag anything. Just work as you would normally work with ideas in your head - clip, screenshot, comment, type thoughts and it would auto-categorize, auto-correlate for you with information push model when you need it based on your existing context. Another angle is temporal relevance is key; information relevance changes with time. 6. I am using some latest neuroscience research to base the idea on. Happy to explore feedback, thoughts, use-cases collaboration ideas.
slaymaker1907 8y ago
Tags can work very well, but only if you have a very customizeable query system for them. In fact, as TiddlyWiki demonstrates you can basically implement a hierarchical system based on tags.

burtonator 8y ago

I mean a document with no tags is just like sticking something in / Plus, with tags you can have multiple categories. Also, Polar suggest tags for you based on your history. So it gets smarter over time. We will probably add some sort of hierarchy viewer but I'm torn over whether it should be compiled based on the tags or built manually.

eslaught 8y ago
I just went to your website and saw this screenshot: https://getpolarized.io/assets/screenshots/document-repository.png https://getpolarized.io/assets/screenshots/document-reposito... This is exactly what I'm talking about. Tags may be supported but it's not a tag-first interface, per se. When I open finder/explorer/nautilus on my computer, what shows up is the top level of my file hierarchy. This would be like an interface where you showed only top-level tags and then you have to click through one of those to get to any actual documents. You can say this increases friction, but the tradeoff is that it promotes a system of organization that becomes faster overall when I have large numbers of documents. Or again, the issue of uncategorized files: you say it's like saving a document in /, but when I save a file on my local machine it doesn't put it in / first and then as a second step I have to manually put it somewhere else. But that's how most tagging systems work: documents go into the soup of the untagged list by default, I have to manually tag it if that's what I care about. Again, it's normalizing an approach where you dump things in and organize them later except the second step usually doesn't happen. Like I said before, it's not that I don't think tagging could be used with discipline to maintain organization, it's that systems that rely on tagging tend to design their interfaces in a way where tagging is at most an afterthought and often isn't done at all. Whereas on my desktop I literally can't save a file without putting it somewhere in the file hierarchy, and the UI is designed to put that hierarchy front and center.
- burtonator 8y ago
  Ah! That screenshot is out of date. https://i.imgur.com/hXizVHG.png https://i.imgur.com/hXizVHG.png Tags are now front and center and on by default in the UI. You can easily filter by tag too: https://i.imgur.com/9N5ZMi6.png https://i.imgur.com/9N5ZMi6.png Polar 2.0 will be web based ... there have been thousands of people checking out the website but not many people downloading the app. Had it been web based I don't think that would have been an issue. I think they would have started using it. > it doesn't put it in / first and then as a second step I have to manually put it somewhere else. no.. but it will pick either the users home or their Documents or their Downloads. That's not much better.
SquishyPanda23 8y ago
> Also, Polar suggest tags for you based on your history. So it gets smarter over time. You may want to be careful with this. It sounds like it will lead to a small number of tags becoming increasingly massive to the point where they are basically useless and it is difficult to find anything.

dare2deviate 8y ago

1. 100% agree. Tags based solution is non-started at scale. 2. Problem is pretty much all such apps today require you to be a methodical type-writer/curator on some system-of-record application. Hierarchical structures are only as great as your personal hygiene of maintaining them. 3. This is in no way a critique for Polar. I think its a novel effort but I believe we need something significantly better to be universally effective. 4. I am an aggressive user of Evernote and the best use I have gotten is type a keyword X in the global search and see what pops up from my personal knowledge graph. It's always this painful search (pull model of information) which only as good as your own hierarchy or note keeping or tagging. 5. Out of my own pain, I have started working on a project I called Kontext. Think of it as your personal knowledge graph in the cloud but you don't have to categorize or organize or tag anything. Just work as you would normally work with ideas in your head - clip, screenshot, comment, type thoughts and it would auto-categorize, auto-correlate for you with information push model when you need it based on your existing context. Another angle is temporal relevance is key; information relevance changes with time. 6. I am using some latest neuroscience research to base the idea on. Happy to explore feedback, thoughts, use-cases collaboration ideas.

slaymaker1907 8y ago

Tags can work very well, but only if you have a very customizeable query system for them. In fact, as TiddlyWiki demonstrates you can basically implement a hierarchical system based on tags.