Maybe instead of building another one, go help improve existing ones.

I appreciate the implied question... why do this? Essentially I believe the current approaches fail to be 'mainstream friendly'. I've started to discuss this with a neuroscientist friend of mine and we are currently exploring why this is the case.

> I believe the current approaches fail to be 'mainstream friendly'

Maybe Zettelkasten won't be ever 'mainstream friendly'?

I use Obsidian and Notion (before that I've used txt files, Evernote and Joplin) but I don't use Zettelkasten method. And personally I think there is already so many different note taking apps that building another one won't do anything. And there are some good open source apps that would use some extra help. Of course you can do whatever you want.

I agree about "note taking apps" (I use Notion nearly every day) but that's not actually what a Zettelkasten is. It's really a workflow that facilitates thinking and creativity.

Notion is a place I keep tidbits of information... for example a database of my videogame collection, a history of all my previous addresses (I've globe trotted my entire life) or a repository of highly detailed professional notes on complex topics. Even then I'm still not sure that Notion is really a good long term solution since their staff could theoretically access all my private information without me knowing (I've had this confirmed to me via a support ticket).

So, while Notion has extremely good problem solution fit for a lot of my use cases, Notion however doesn't actually help me develop my thoughts on philosophy or help structure my thoughts on how to approach questions I have in my fields of enquiry or help me create content from original ideas. My physical Zettelkasten does.

Notetaking is by definition not "mainstream friendly" and probably never will until the rise of true AI. Each solution will fail because it's hard work on an everchanging battlefield and most peopke gave neither and instant reward nor a longterm motivation to play the system long enough to maybe get something some day.

I 100% agree with what you're saying but I think it's still possible to make it compelling for users.

Do you have any details on this or is it not documented anywhere yet?

As in my conversations with my neuroscience friend? If that's what you're referring to than no, it's all private conversation and private WhatsApp messages (I know, I know, I've done my best to get her over to Signal)

I combine Joplin and Zotero for Zettelkasten-like capability. One thing I wish is that Joplin's desktop client wasn't based on Electron.

There are quite a few out there, why are you looking into building your own?

I answered this briefly above, but I could flip the question by asking, if the other approaches are so great, why haven't they found product market fit and mass adoption?

And that lack of mass market adoption really annoys me because I believe in the benefits of a Zettelkasten and it would really increase creativity and productivity across many fields if there was mass market adoption.

I disagree about the mass market adoption - compared to how long Zettelkasten has been trending (less than a year), the rise in its tooling and usage is quite phenomenal.

Could you please help me understand the basis for your point of view? Precisely what evidence are you referring to? For example, the subreddit on it seems quite small... and many of the people I know could benefit from it have never heard of it before.

The first time I really heard of it was about a year ago, and there has been an explosion in tools and articles about it. No new innovation will reach mass market adoption in that time, but Zettelkasten is well on its way.