Many PKMs offer the possibility to display which other pages/objects link to the current page directly within the page (often called “linked references” or “backlinks”) It can be displayed as a simple list of pages (example in Notion), or with some context around the link (example in Roam Research).
In Anytype, the backlinks are accessible through the Navigation view, with a preview of the pages linking to the current page, but without the context of the links.
Having the backlinks showed directly within the page with some context (Roam Research/Notabase/Tana style) gives tremendous advantage in terms of navigation speed within a personal knowledge graph.
HOW COULD IT BE DONE
I would recommend the Roam Research / Notabase / Tana style, with context around the link, even though I realise this raises difficulties as an object can be linked in different ways.
I think making this optional might be good idea, as it does not suit everybody needs (it is more oriented to the “Knowledge graph” vision rather than the “Databases” vision, but it seems to me that Anytype tries to reconcile the two visions). I see three possibilities for the optional activation of backlinks display
global activation in settings,
per-page activation,
special block to insert backlinks (wherever on the page).
REAL WORLD USE CASES
It helps a lot to navigate through your knowledge base with speed.
It gives you a quick peek at all pages/ideas/contexts linking to your current pages, which helps creative thinking, memorisation and quick information to relevant information.
I like your suggestion to make a block for backlinks. It’s similar to a TOC block, and you could add it to templates as intermediate of a global/per page setting.
This feature is important, I can do search (Ctrl+S) and find the page but I don’t know where it is located (eg in a tree widget).
It’s possible to switch to graph view to see the previous node but if the backlinks are shown is better, easier to see.
I’d just like to add one more thing on how could this improved on. Compared to the Room example, Tana actually groups all the references by relations which makes it a lot easier to find stuff (especially when you have a lot of links).
For inspiration I think Capacities have a useful backlinks implementation, where you can now modify how they are shown. That these backlinks are shown on all objects is super nice - for my use case at least. Hope to see some of that
Would love to see this as well, because right now I’m linking all my notes, images etc to other other objects via a linked objects relation inside a set. In this way you can categorise and link all objects super fast, but then there is not a way to show all those linked objects automatically to it’s corresponding page.
It wouldn’t add 10 votes if the people who voted for that feature also voted for this feature.
That other FR is more about making it so that users can create backlinks by themselves basically, why this is more about the traditional way backlinks were shown in apps like Roam etc.
What would be cool is if we could display backlinks as a block, but also filter which backlinks we want to display in the block.
For example, in a Human object, I’d display a backlink block that only shows backlinks from Meeting objects. That way, in the Human object, I’d see all the Meetings that the Humans participated in (but not all of the other objects that the Humans is linked to).
So true. I currently use the flow option (ctrl+o) to see the backlinks. So, as seeing backlinks and “forward?” links😅 , is possible in the flow diagram, maybe we can leverage that to also see these links when we search or when we are in an obiect.
Edit: I can say, from using apps like Obsidian, that adding this functionality would really help with discovering new ideas within our Anytype Space.
Good day
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