Re:Ask HN: How do you organise your files and folders?
by lxdesk on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @05:10PM
(#23408805)
Personal work goes into a sync folder organized by year.
References are organized by media type, then by general subject, then (usually) by author. I mark up filenames with tags so that I have some options for tracking down stuff with file search.
When I want to collect references for a project they get copied out.
What I've noticed is that the organization ought to reflect the mind, and the mind doesn't run on Internet Time. You probably aren't a professional librarian archiving the whole world's knowledge, but rather a person who is using curation to say "this is what I like" and create a quick-access space for self-exploration. If you go too general in your organizational patterns, if you archive too much or archive unseen works, you won't use it. You might as well run off to a search engine in that case. So it has to be more of a gradual-phases accumulation.
The most recent change is that I started copying more, because I'm aiming not to data-hoard and with current capacities it's hard to fill up the drive with references without falling into hoarding.
References are organized by media type, then by general subject, then (usually) by author. I mark up filenames with tags so that I have some options for tracking down stuff with file search.
When I want to collect references for a project they get copied out.
What I've noticed is that the organization ought to reflect the mind, and the mind doesn't run on Internet Time. You probably aren't a professional librarian archiving the whole world's knowledge, but rather a person who is using curation to say "this is what I like" and create a quick-access space for self-exploration. If you go too general in your organizational patterns, if you archive too much or archive unseen works, you won't use it. You might as well run off to a search engine in that case. So it has to be more of a gradual-phases accumulation.
The most recent change is that I started copying more, because I'm aiming not to data-hoard and with current capacities it's hard to fill up the drive with references without falling into hoarding.