It does? Wonder how Notion is doing…
Because they represent a hierarchical organization? Because, if I tell you “history / Europe / middle ages”, you narrow down from tens of thousands of articles into 1 or 3? Because it provides navigating, or browsing, to a destination that may not be clear? Folders provide “buckets” that contain a limited number of topically-related items. If I look at my Graph in AnyType, it is probably the most useless mess of dots and lines. I don’t see how anyone can find anything in that “new concept”. Semantic links between items are fantastic but just dumping everything under the sun onto the viewing area is far from useful.
It does not eliminate it. It is practically the same thing. Besides, I do not want to create inline queries for every folder.
How do you find things, then? Do you have stuff just lying around your room or do you have it separated by some system, in separate rooms, corners, boxes, shelves, etc.?
And having that possibility is great. But having dozens of links of equal “importance” from almost every object is cognitively overwhelming and, therefore, practically useless.
In practice, when using these linear systems, I find it extremely easy to create pages/notes on the same topics multiple times, simply because I don’t have topical folders where these are stored. After 12 years I tend to call the same things by different terms and, if it is not in a certain branch of a tree, but in a storage hall with (tens of) thousands of items, it is hard to find it again.
Obviously, the folder tree is just one dimension, or a property / relation, between a parent and a child folder. But it represents a way of navigating to a specific items from the top-level view to whatever view that items happens to be at. “Australia / Tax / Statements / 2025” always takes me to the items I expect exactly there. I don’t see hundreds of links to Australian history, geography, people I know there, places within Australia, addresses of institutions, bank statements, or myriad of other things related to Australia, or Tax, or 2025, or Statements.
It obviously doesn’t. That’s why I’m on the forum checking if there is a solution to actually finding and combing the information.
Folders have been used way before computers were invented. 
I think some people are mixing concepts and products. I don’t care if we are talking about Obsidian, AnyType, or any other product. What I’m interested in is the way of organizing information. In the last 30+ years of maintaining some sort of personal knowledge base in various shapes and forms, hierarchical structure has proven the most resilient. I like having the “brain-style” links between items. But the types of these links are different.
So, having types for the relationships / links is probably a solution. A Folder and Subfolder just represent a hierarchy, a tree, a skeleton or Table of Contents that one can use to navigate a tome, or a book. Whereas, the “new anytype way of doing things” is like an index. In an index, I can see that the word Tax is used 20 times, at different places. I don’t want to check those 20 places, to find the one I need at any particular moment.
Anytype is no physical room where I have to remember where I left things. I categorize it when I create it. Then I can have a look in the drawer projects, behind the door meetings, in the ceiling of notes - it’s everywhere. Everything that reminds me of it is a door to it.
And this is what I mean by burden. The need to remember where I put something exactly is just friction when it comes to information. This is not how my brain works. I often need to think abstractly, of other things to find the curve and path again to the thing I want to remember.
but what if other things that belong to Europe, but not history, need to have a connection? then the whole hierarchy is worth nothing or I have to create another hierarchy where Europe is represented and duplicated.
Then I can have “trips / Europe / Italy” and “Restaurants / Europe / Italy / Rome”. But in Anytype’s case I have one unique object of Europe and Italy where everything, from trips, to restaurants, history and so on can reference the same thing and potentially can create new connections and meaning.
If you are going to be snarky about it, then allow me:
Exactly! Start by arriving at the 20th century, then to the 21th century! Electricity does amazing things! See recent inventions: Internet
Or in the words of Google: “It doesn’t scale”
That’s correct. So, how do I find things related to “history / Europe / middle ages” in this “new” system, then?
Say, I have a link to the project where these scientists are building a 13-century castle. I read an article and have stored it somewhere (in one of the notes in the above folder). How am I supposed to find this without a folder structure? Should I just look for Europe (and see many hundreds of links), or middle ages (closer but still dozens of irrelevant links), history (thousands of items, not related to what I’m looking for)?
I think you got the order wrong. I truly agree with Nasim Taleb here:
“Things that have worked for a long time are preferable – they are more likely to have reached their ergodic states. At the worst, they are harmless, have a lengthy track record, and we know how to handle them. New things, on the other hand, have a much higher propensity to fail.”
Folders, or hierarchical organization, have existed for pretty much as long as the civilization. Electricity, Internet, Google, etc. have not.
We can’t! Users of this system never find anything!!!
It was just a snarky “tongue in cheek” reply to your snarky comment 
I don’t do philosophy here (but I can do it, its $50 per hour).
I will let @krst take it, as I have stuff to do.
there is no definitive answer as there are multiple ways to accomplish this, via sets, collections and links within objects. Everyone is different and the entry point is for you to decide. Perhaps your topic of research is middle ages, then that could be a query where you then can sort and filter for the topics of your choice. you can also have multiple views with pre defined filters. Perhaps you later realize that you want to have other topics related to middle ages at a glance and you than can create a new view within the set without the need to create a new folder hierarchy.
I would create a bookmark of that article and have a property that it belongs to middle ages, is of type bookmark, has the tag castle and perhaps another property for the time period (so this could then also be a filterable prop). Then you have multiple possibilities to create entry points, it could be a set or a page for castles. you could also just link it to a page that is a summary or explaination of the 13th century or you have a set for bookmarks and filter for history or the time period (as it is a prop).
It all depends on how you structure your space. This is the new burden that Anytype creates, finding a system for yourself, that only makes sence for you, and then just trust it and let loose.
Thank you. I structure it hierarchically, in folders. It works. It has worked for the past 30 years. I see no problem with it. Except in AnyType and other systems where, for a quick note or bookmark, I need to spend half an hour adding all possible relevant tags, creating links, filters, sets and other kind of new-age space technology items. I need to be able to store information within 10 seconds and retrieve it within 20. Otherwise it has very low chances of surviving for longer than 3 months.
If you can provide one useful sentence within that hour, I’ll be happy to pay $50.
just an additon to my previous post: tags for me are like things that every object could potentially have (like documentation, todo, important, programming) where potentially every object can have a relation to but I don’t want it to treat it like an object or concept itself.
Seriously now, there are great users here in this forum, and @krst is one of the best. He can probably help you more than I can.
Don’t take it baldy my comments, I just have to start working in about 15 minutes!
then you haven’t found a good structure for yourself to reduce all this. When I create a meeting I just add 2-3 properties (project, participants, date is pre filled) and I’m set. This consumes as much time as if you navigate the save to dialog
Then we’re probably talking about different use cases.
I would like to brainstorm on the properties / link types. I’ve mentioned it several times but it can be glanced over and missed. The folder structure is one Type of links. Call it Hierarchy. It represents our mental model. Using this, I can get from a 10,000m-view down to the mentioned castle article. I need to be able to create a new item as a leaf at a particular place in that hierarchy tree, so that I can find it later on. Going down the folders is simply getting to the lower-level. It’s like a zoom-in on a world map. We can call them Folders or whatever, the point is that. And, besides, that’s exactly what the title of this request states.
I’m not saying the folders are perfect. But they have so far provided the least friction in locating at least an approximate bucket where I can narrow the search.
It would be like you need to include this castle link in your meeting as it is related to the meeting topic. At the time you created it, you had no idea what potential uses it may have in the future. Now you need to locate it and link it to that meeting. Along with anything else related to Middle-Ages European history.
Edit: just found all the graph filtering options, which are very useful. Hope such a view is coming to the mobile app.
The discussion was too long and “intense,” so I skimmed through it (plus @krst and @sturdily have already answered most of the questions, and I trust them to do it right—yes, I’m too lazy to read everything, sorry 
).
Just to share a funny fact: I was able to work in a company where Google Workplace was used, and emails were managed via Outlook (yes, really…). And 99% of users are convinced that Gmail has folders! But no, they’re tags! Which just goes to show that with tags, you can make it look like you have folders (and even more).
I think this would be a usecase for the graph view. It can be arranged like this, depending on the connections you make. In addition to the leaf structure, tha last leaf can then in addition also have other connections.
I also don’t think any system has yet nailed it to please every one and use case. people are different, minds are different.
I just wanted to showcase some examples how one could structure something when coming from a more traditional place.
You see, I also struggled with this at first. Then I played around with Anytype, went off and on again for some time. At some point though it made click and something changed that I from now on thought: what have I been thinking in terms of folders and fixed places to store something.
It was an exciting moment and I also want others to experience this sensation, haha.
When it comes to research I think Obsidian also would be my solution of choice. With all the linking in PDFs, the flexibility of arranging everything - I also think that a folder structure might be useful then.
I agree with what you are saying. If this system is superior then it should be almost effortless to recreate an inferior system, like folders, using it. Unfortunately it is not (yet). Once that is possible, people will be able to migrate their existing systems and use them, and eventually expand their use cases to cover other possibilities provided by it. But it is still quite clunky in that regard, unfortunately. Hope it gets there as there really is potential.
Yes, the Graph view provides the “tree”. With different types of links, it would be possible to see that this specific Tax page “belongs to” Australia but it is also “related to” the Austrian Tax page. I think, right now, links are just links and that increases cognitive load significantly when browsing the graph.
I know what you mean. I wonder if after “Tag as Object”, something similar is possible (also with group support on queries/collections).
and the ability to click on a tag to go to a query directly 
can’t wait
You can make a pig look like a beauty queen but can you move a tag-folder under another parent?