(Archived) Do you worrry about EN getting cluttered?

[overzeetop 0]

I'm a brand new evernote user, trying ti figure out how this can best be used for part of my organization. The formatting of the database seems very flat - notebooks and notes. It seems that my EN could get just as cluttered as my real life, just digitally.

Worse, as I look through my old files (about 20 years worth) on my server - most of it well laid out in a folder structure - I find that there's a lot of detritus. Bits of information which is out of date (old TiVo hacking tips), or full of keywords that foul useful searches.

Is there a way to easily clean out EN, or will it just become three closets full of two level sorted data which becomes too fouled with data to search effectively?

Example: I want to find the old video that shows the two guys doing zippo lighter tricks on youtube. It's google, right? Best search engine in the world! Can't find it. Too much "stuff" in the way, and all the words are too common.

I don't want this to be my data in 20 years. Suggestions?

[edit] updated title to be more specific

[JeffChausse 0]

I agree with your concerns wholeheartedly. The main thing I don't like about Evernote is that it seems to be designed for people who don't care about being organized. Yeah, I can search and probably find anything I need to find, but when totally random things show up every time I search, it feels like I'm rummaging through a junk drawer every time I access my information. Still, I'm trying (probably for the third time) to try to get into the Evernote mindset, since there's nothing like it for total cross-platform synchronization of information.

[overzeetop 0]

I think I've figured some of it out. I was concerned about the flat structure, but I think tags may be the substitute I need (no concern about "where" to file something if it applies to two things; tag it for both). Also, it's becoming clear that EN isn't for browsing. That has both its good points and bad points.

I'm mostly curious about how people with very large databases deal with really old stuff, mainly outdated information, and with the potential size of the database. As cameras on phones take higher density photos (upcoming handsets are threatening to be 8MP) the storage will get greater and greater. That may not seem salient with storage decreasing in cost, but it means less and less local folders on mobile devices, and very long restore times if you lose a local database (downloading 12GB can take quite a while on a basic DSL line or *gasp* cellular data).

[danlandrum 4]

I highly recommend you read David Allen's Getting Things Done. It's all about how to deal with your stuff. Evernote is part of the solution for me, not part of the problem. Old stuff that needs to be kept gets an @ref tag. Trash as much stuff as you can. You'll sleep better. If it is something I might like to do someday, ie. a project, but I can't or won't do now, it gets a @someday tag. If it needs to be seen on a certain date it should go on the calendar with a reference back to the Evernote entry. All of this works well if you adopt the process of reviewing. It's all in the book and it is life changing as long as you change your life. ;-)

Dan

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

if you lose a local database (downloading 12GB can take quite a while on a basic DSL line or *gasp* cellular data).

That's why you do this thing called 'backup.' My EN database is over 2 gigs (over 18,000 notes) & I really don't want to have to download it from the EN servers. Plus, I have some local (non-sync'd) notebooks.

And yes, tags function as sub-folders/sub-notebooks. There are no notes you can find using sub-folders/sub-notebooks that you cannot find using tags & tags allow greater flexiblity. This has been discussed quite a bit on this board. Here is a specific example I posted a while back:

viewtopic.php?f=30&t=10507&p=55497&hilit=exactly+tags#p55497

Additionally, the EN search function is very powerful. So powerful that I tend to find myself using fewer & fewer notebooks & still being able to quickly find the note(s) I'm looking for.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Example: I want to find the old video that shows the two guys doing zippo lighter tricks on youtube. It's google, right? Best search engine in the world! Can't find it. Too much "stuff" in the way, and all the words are too common.

I don't want this to be my data in 20 years. Suggestions?

Well, if you search on only "lighter tricks" (not enclosed in quotation marks) on Google, the first thing up is a video from Youtube. That's basically how the EN search engine works.

[C.Noize 2]

Am i the only person or doesn't it bother anybody else, that you can delete tags including it's subtags with the delete key without any confirmation?

Or ist this just me? I'm very reluctant to use tags as long as i can accidentally hit the del key, while a tag is selected and all my tags are permanentally deleted.

Is there a possibility to make the deleting of tags/subtags a little bit harder?

[jefito 5,589]

Am i the only person or doesn't it bother anybody else, that you can delete tags including it's subtags with the delete key without any confirmation?

Or ist this just me? I'm very reluctant to use tags as long as i can accidentally hit the del key, while a tag is selected and all my tags are permanentally deleted.

I might be bothered by this, but the only times I've deleted tags is when I was hunting down unused tags. I was very careful.

~Jeff

[overzeetop 0]

Well, if you search on only "lighter tricks" (not enclosed in quotation marks) on Google, the first thing up is a video from Youtube. That's basically how the EN search engine works.

That's exactly the problem - 3000 video results, and none of the top 100 are the one I'm looking for. Lots of crud that gets sorted.

I know that you can get better results with better tags...it's a bit chicken and egg. Choosing the right tags when you start is critical. The answer to my original posted question might be: "I just ignore the clutter, with efficient tagging it doesn't get in the way."

Time to go figure out tagging!

BTW - on the backup stuff, I agree that backups are critical, but I haven't found what the limits are for EN yet and I'm trying to do so before I sink hundreds of hours of time into using it only to find that the continual increase in usefulness turns into a slow degradation in performance and usability. I also don't know how it stores data, though it sounds like individual files. I'd hate to have a management nightmare like backing up my Thunderbird database everyday - each account is in a single DB file, so I end up having to sync 4GB of mail every freaking night, even though it may only change 5-20MB a day.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

That's exactly the problem - 3000 video results, and none of the top 100 are the one I'm looking for. Lots of crud that gets sorted.

If I have 3000 results for 'lighter tricks' in my EN database, then I rely on more refined searching like keywords, titles, tags. IE "The all time BEST lighter trick" as a title for the note. Or search on "zippo lighter trick" to eliminate Bic lighter tricks.

I also don't know how it stores data, though it sounds like individual files.

No. That would be crazy. EN uses one database file.

[jefito 5,589]

BTW - on the backup stuff, I agree that backups are critical, but I haven't found what the limits are for EN yet and I'm trying to do so before I sink hundreds of hours of time into using it only to find that the continual increase in usefulness turns into a slow degradation in performance and usability. I also don't know how it stores data, though it sounds like individual files. I'd hate to have a management nightmare like backing up my Thunderbird database everyday - each account is in a single DB file, so I end up having to sync 4GB of mail every freaking night, even though it may only change 5-20MB a day.

One DB file overall (i.e., not per notebook), in general. I just set up a Windows task to do my backups via SyncToy at night, and include the Evernote application data directory.

~Jeff

[C.Noize 2]

I might be bothered by this, but the only times I've deleted tags is when I was hunting down unused tags. I was very careful.

~Jeff

Than i must be quite clumbsy, because i already deleted a tag by mistake after a few days using EN.

So i'm a little burned by this incident and was focused more on the notebooks, than on tags in order to organize things, but now i realize, that this is not the way to go.

It would be great if the EN-Team could make the deleting of tags a little bit harder. It's not that anyoing to confirm the delition of tags. How often do you do that, really?