8 ms·

The bit about replacing folder hierarchies with tags and search reminds me of some ideas that are actually pretty old now. Back in the '80s and '90s, there was

The bit about replacing folder hierarchies with tags and search reminds me of some ideas that are actually pretty old now. Back in the '80s and '90s, there was a wave of interest in replacing the traditional filesystem with a relational database, for most of the same reasons as outlined here (we can store more files than we can meaningfully organize, hierarchical organization doesn't really fit lots of use cases, searching is easier than clicking up and down a hierarchy, etc.). This led to a bunch of different products and almost-products, like Apple's "Soups" for the Newton (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soup_(Apple) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soup_(Apple)) and Microsoft's WinFS (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS), and the original file system for BeOS (see https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/03/past-present-future-file-systems/7/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/03/past-present-future-...). None of these ever really took off, though. Mostly this was because they ran into unsolvable performance problems. Hardware has come a long way since the mid-'90s, though, so it'd be interesting to see if those ideas that were impractical then are practical today.

rootlocus 7y ago
> Hardware has come a long way since the mid-'90s Too bad Wirth's law states that software is overcompensating for that.
bitwize 7y ago
Because that's just what every user wants -- for all the performance gains of their new, fast hardware to be soaked up by OS administrivia they didn't even realize they needed. I mean, FS performance under Windows is already such garbage that an SSD is basically a requirement for a usable desktop; a little more chug is basically just gravy on top by this point.
- icebraining 7y ago
  Don't they need it, though? People are already using layers over the filesystem, like "media libraries" and "document managers", which undoubtedly trade performance for "administrivia". Maybe it'd be better if this was provided by a common layer, much like the FS already provides a layer over disk blocks.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
I actually think it has less to do with performance problems than the significantly more complicated mental model one needs to deal with relational databases. Hierarchical files and folders are very simple.
- smacktoward 7y ago
  The theory was that you would never really interact directly with the database; you'd interact with applications, which would just happen to use the database as their data store. So developers could use it to build rich interfaces that were appropriate for the tasks their app was supposed to tackle, and those interfaces would shield the user from the complexity of dealing with the database directly.
  - monetus 7y ago
    This sounds similar to the mobile approach, excepting that the underlying fs is heirarchical. Do you have any idea how this worked with paths in the terminal?
    - smacktoward 7y ago
      I'm not sure any of them particularly cared about the terminal. Remember, this was the '90s; all the companies that explored this (Microsoft, Apple, Be) were deeply invested in the GUI as the Future of Computing™.
- wowtip 7y ago
  Yes, many ordinary users never get past the folders-on-desktop organizational level for their files...
horsawlarway 7y ago
I think those ideas don't take off because tags don't really solve the problem adequately for normal people. A folder structure is a self-contained map that will help guide me to the correct document. Each step has hints about where I can go next (sub-directory names), starting from most broad going to most specific. It takes advantage of both locality (similar topics are usually next to each other) and logical, hierarchical grouping. A tag is a random thought or property stuck onto a file that I now have to remember every time I want to find that file again. I have no way to specify that tags may have a useful hierarchy of other similar but distinct items without manually coming up with a tagging system to give me that. Folders do it by default. Basically - Folders are a good enough default. Tags might be better in some cases, but you have to be excruciatingly disciplined about using it and I find most people just end up recreating a structure that looks suspiciously like folders.
- atoav 7y ago
  While I agree with the general sentiment that the mental model of tags is more complex and discovering the right tags is a bigger challange than slapping some tag onto some file, I don't see it as something that needs to replace a traditional file system. Tags are more useful for certain types of files than others. E.g. let's say you want to mark certain projects done. Instead of moving them to a done folder you can just add tags to them – without changing any paths you change their status. Tags are also quite useful for pictures, music and other media content. I never really got, why even in 2019 there is not good support for tags on most desktops.
  - ElFitz 7y ago
    macOS' Finder has had tag support for some time. That's ~10% of desktops in the world (and 1 of the 3 "mainstream" desktop OS out there, counting linux) I'm too much of a mess to use them, but they're there.
    - einr 7y ago
      Windows has had file tagging since at least XP. Not a lot of people use them (probably because the UI for it is hard to discover), but I have used stuff like royalty-free photo libraries that have searchable tags. Here's a reference: https://www.howtogeek.com/344543/how-to-tag-any-windows-file-for-easy-organization/ https://www.howtogeek.com/344543/how-to-tag-any-windows-file...
akeck 7y ago
As a counter to tagging everything, in which one "thing" can be in multiple "places" (tags), there's spatial file management. [1] http://archive.arstechnica.com/paedia/f/finder/finder-3.htm http://archive.arstechnica.com/paedia/f/finder/finder-3.htm
com2kid 7y ago
It doesn't work because users are unwilling to go through and tag all their files. We live in a world were people still email word files back and forth, incrementing numbers at the end in a desperate attempt to keep track of versions. (Or just appending "final final...") Now imagine asking users to tag each copy of that word document that lands in their inbox and gets downloaded? (Assuming file system tags will be tossed soon as the file goes through email). Google Photos does tagging properly. They only had to spend 5 years building the most sophisticated consumer visual machine learning algorithm ever made. Then they made it work on animals. (Why haven't I seen any discussion around the fact that Google has trained a model to identify animals by their face? Super cool!) But even ML is only ever going to be able to ID a subset of content. (Google's auto tagging of things is mind blowing though, did you know you can ask Google for a list of all restaurants you've visited in a given city? Creepy but useful!)
- sfopdxnonstop 7y ago
  "It doesn't work because users are unwilling to go through and tag all their files." This doesn't make sense. They "File -> Save" to a location, right? That's a tag. All metadata is tags. People give filetype suffixes to their filenames, right? That's a tag. They might "Save As -> Format", right? That's a tag. Maybe they "File -> Print" on January 17 at 3pm? That's a tag. Oh and ALSO they are a 'superuser' who wants the photo to go into "Great Pics Of My Dog" tag? Cool, they apply that, and that's also a tag. People can handle change, people can handle simple concepts, people use tags today, people can handle tags generally.
  - com2kid 7y ago
    Getting users to tag data has already been attempted. Heck Office has had this built in for years (decades?). We live in a world where after nearly 30 years of the folders paradigm, the vast majority of every day users still store everything on their desktop. (Though IT policies are working to change this, forcing files to be stored on network drives and such). Some more advanced users may use a folder called "work". Years ago I went through and tagged all my photos. Of course the photo management system I used up and died. After that I gave up. I do have some photo organized and stored locally, but now days Google Photos handles most of that for me, including the auto-tagging. When people sit down at a computer, they generally have a task in mind. Be it write a document, calculate with a spreadsheet, or send a picture of their dog to a friend. Most people don't think ahead to "5 years from now I may want to find this document so I should think up of every possible word I may search for then and apply it as a tag." Tagging data takes time, and a good deal of thought to have a coherent system. Then, technically, those tags need to persist and transfer across disparate OSs. I personally love the idea of tags. My capstone project in college was exploring different UIs for tagging files, and trying to make the process as fast and friendly as possible. But changing users habits is hard.
zwaps 7y ago
It's a bit of an chicken-and-egg problem - or as we like to say, an equilibrium of many. Every attempt I did to use any great tagging system, in pretty much anything ever, had resulted in the system/app/infrastructure (etc.) dying sooner or later, which is why I don't use any of that stuff, creating the same externality for others. Folders, on the other hand, are stable. You can't change folders, at least not simply. Jumping between those equilbrias needs a better strategy than "offer tags".
solidsnack9000 7y ago
Yet files are bigger now and more numerous than ever. We definitely want rich indexes of files sometimes but files can be so much more than rich data for users — they are also cheap book-keeping for programs for users. Imagine trying to implement a performant database on top of this database. No amount of technology can make O(log N) a substitute for O(1).
raxxorrax 7y ago
As someone that had to interface sharepoint once or twice, I cannot get behind the idea to replace folders. Folders are just a simple tree structure. Like any table of contents or index. That is not a concept too hard to understand. My 75 year old grandpa mastered this in about 10 minutes. I have much more problems with people that ask how they can scrap their images from smartphones. Because they don't know where their custom app likes to save them. And I have to search too. This is 100 times worse if you do not use the one way the manufacturer intended that might not be applicable to your use case. The article mentions some really good ideas for window managers. I currently use a widescreen curved monitor that is pretty awesome, but the normal windows window manager is actually quite decent. You just use a few different hotkeys. Nothing that inhibits "productivity".

rootlocus 7y ago

> Hardware has come a long way since the mid-'90s Too bad Wirth's law states that software is overcompensating for that.

bitwize 7y ago

Because that's just what every user wants -- for all the performance gains of their new, fast hardware to be soaked up by OS administrivia they didn't even realize they needed. I mean, FS performance under Windows is already such garbage that an SSD is basically a requirement for a usable desktop; a little more chug is basically just gravy on top by this point.

icebraining 7y ago
Don't they need it, though? People are already using layers over the filesystem, like "media libraries" and "document managers", which undoubtedly trade performance for "administrivia". Maybe it'd be better if this was provided by a common layer, much like the FS already provides a layer over disk blocks.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago

I actually think it has less to do with performance problems than the significantly more complicated mental model one needs to deal with relational databases. Hierarchical files and folders are very simple.

smacktoward 7y ago
The theory was that you would never really interact directly with the database; you'd interact with applications, which would just happen to use the database as their data store. So developers could use it to build rich interfaces that were appropriate for the tasks their app was supposed to tackle, and those interfaces would shield the user from the complexity of dealing with the database directly.
- monetus 7y ago
  This sounds similar to the mobile approach, excepting that the underlying fs is heirarchical. Do you have any idea how this worked with paths in the terminal?
  - smacktoward 7y ago
    I'm not sure any of them particularly cared about the terminal. Remember, this was the '90s; all the companies that explored this (Microsoft, Apple, Be) were deeply invested in the GUI as the Future of Computing™.
wowtip 7y ago
Yes, many ordinary users never get past the folders-on-desktop organizational level for their files...

horsawlarway 7y ago

I think those ideas don't take off because tags don't really solve the problem adequately for normal people. A folder structure is a self-contained map that will help guide me to the correct document. Each step has hints about where I can go next (sub-directory names), starting from most broad going to most specific. It takes advantage of both locality (similar topics are usually next to each other) and logical, hierarchical grouping. A tag is a random thought or property stuck onto a file that I now have to remember every time I want to find that file again. I have no way to specify that tags may have a useful hierarchy of other similar but distinct items without manually coming up with a tagging system to give me that. Folders do it by default. Basically - Folders are a good enough default. Tags might be better in some cases, but you have to be excruciatingly disciplined about using it and I find most people just end up recreating a structure that looks suspiciously like folders.

atoav 7y ago
While I agree with the general sentiment that the mental model of tags is more complex and discovering the right tags is a bigger challange than slapping some tag onto some file, I don't see it as something that needs to replace a traditional file system. Tags are more useful for certain types of files than others. E.g. let's say you want to mark certain projects done. Instead of moving them to a done folder you can just add tags to them – without changing any paths you change their status. Tags are also quite useful for pictures, music and other media content. I never really got, why even in 2019 there is not good support for tags on most desktops.
- ElFitz 7y ago
  macOS' Finder has had tag support for some time. That's ~10% of desktops in the world (and 1 of the 3 "mainstream" desktop OS out there, counting linux) I'm too much of a mess to use them, but they're there.
  - einr 7y ago
    Windows has had file tagging since at least XP. Not a lot of people use them (probably because the UI for it is hard to discover), but I have used stuff like royalty-free photo libraries that have searchable tags. Here's a reference: https://www.howtogeek.com/344543/how-to-tag-any-windows-file-for-easy-organization/ https://www.howtogeek.com/344543/how-to-tag-any-windows-file...

akeck 7y ago

As a counter to tagging everything, in which one "thing" can be in multiple "places" (tags), there's spatial file management. [1] http://archive.arstechnica.com/paedia/f/finder/finder-3.htm http://archive.arstechnica.com/paedia/f/finder/finder-3.htm

com2kid 7y ago

It doesn't work because users are unwilling to go through and tag all their files. We live in a world were people still email word files back and forth, incrementing numbers at the end in a desperate attempt to keep track of versions. (Or just appending "final final...") Now imagine asking users to tag each copy of that word document that lands in their inbox and gets downloaded? (Assuming file system tags will be tossed soon as the file goes through email). Google Photos does tagging properly. They only had to spend 5 years building the most sophisticated consumer visual machine learning algorithm ever made. Then they made it work on animals. (Why haven't I seen any discussion around the fact that Google has trained a model to identify animals by their face? Super cool!) But even ML is only ever going to be able to ID a subset of content. (Google's auto tagging of things is mind blowing though, did you know you can ask Google for a list of all restaurants you've visited in a given city? Creepy but useful!)

sfopdxnonstop 7y ago
"It doesn't work because users are unwilling to go through and tag all their files." This doesn't make sense. They "File -> Save" to a location, right? That's a tag. All metadata is tags. People give filetype suffixes to their filenames, right? That's a tag. They might "Save As -> Format", right? That's a tag. Maybe they "File -> Print" on January 17 at 3pm? That's a tag. Oh and ALSO they are a 'superuser' who wants the photo to go into "Great Pics Of My Dog" tag? Cool, they apply that, and that's also a tag. People can handle change, people can handle simple concepts, people use tags today, people can handle tags generally.
- com2kid 7y ago
  Getting users to tag data has already been attempted. Heck Office has had this built in for years (decades?). We live in a world where after nearly 30 years of the folders paradigm, the vast majority of every day users still store everything on their desktop. (Though IT policies are working to change this, forcing files to be stored on network drives and such). Some more advanced users may use a folder called "work". Years ago I went through and tagged all my photos. Of course the photo management system I used up and died. After that I gave up. I do have some photo organized and stored locally, but now days Google Photos handles most of that for me, including the auto-tagging. When people sit down at a computer, they generally have a task in mind. Be it write a document, calculate with a spreadsheet, or send a picture of their dog to a friend. Most people don't think ahead to "5 years from now I may want to find this document so I should think up of every possible word I may search for then and apply it as a tag." Tagging data takes time, and a good deal of thought to have a coherent system. Then, technically, those tags need to persist and transfer across disparate OSs. I personally love the idea of tags. My capstone project in college was exploring different UIs for tagging files, and trying to make the process as fast and friendly as possible. But changing users habits is hard.

zwaps 7y ago

It's a bit of an chicken-and-egg problem - or as we like to say, an equilibrium of many. Every attempt I did to use any great tagging system, in pretty much anything ever, had resulted in the system/app/infrastructure (etc.) dying sooner or later, which is why I don't use any of that stuff, creating the same externality for others. Folders, on the other hand, are stable. You can't change folders, at least not simply. Jumping between those equilbrias needs a better strategy than "offer tags".

solidsnack9000 7y ago

Yet files are bigger now and more numerous than ever. We definitely want rich indexes of files sometimes but files can be so much more than rich data for users — they are also cheap book-keeping for programs for users. Imagine trying to implement a performant database on top of this database. No amount of technology can make O(log N) a substitute for O(1).

raxxorrax 7y ago

As someone that had to interface sharepoint once or twice, I cannot get behind the idea to replace folders. Folders are just a simple tree structure. Like any table of contents or index. That is not a concept too hard to understand. My 75 year old grandpa mastered this in about 10 minutes. I have much more problems with people that ask how they can scrap their images from smartphones. Because they don't know where their custom app likes to save them. And I have to search too. This is 100 times worse if you do not use the one way the manufacturer intended that might not be applicable to your use case. The article mentions some really good ideas for window managers. I currently use a widescreen curved monitor that is pretty awesome, but the normal windows window manager is actually quite decent. You just use a few different hotkeys. Nothing that inhibits "productivity".