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(Archived) Related Notes Don't Seem Very Related :-)!

ZZZ

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ZZZ

ZZZ 135

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I just upgraded to the latest version of EN on the Mac (might be the latest beta version) and I see that when I click on some notes it shows me related notes. Except the related notes have absolutely nothing in common with the note I'm on. Is this using some type of algorithm to determine related notes? What types of relationships are related notes supposed to have.

BTW, from a UX perspective, if you are going to introduce something like this, I recommend some explanation where it says "related notes" explaining what the feature is or how it is supposed to work etc. So that the user isn't left sitting there scratching their head wondering "how the hell are these related"?

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tardis

tardis 87

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I'm at a loss.. How do you even _get_ to the "Related Notes" functionality? I can't find it...

It should be enabled as soon as you upgrade to 5.0.2. You're using at least version 5.0.2 of the Mac client, right? If so and you still don't see related notes on any of your notes, check Preferences > General and make sure "Show related notes" has a checkmark next to it.

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Edu Tanaka

Edu Tanaka 4

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I'm on version 5.0.3 and I agree. The "related notes" don't seem much related. In fact, they even suggest things that turns out to be funny or annoying...

So, how do you turn off this option or how can I "calibrate" evernote do relate things that are actually related?

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GrumpyMonkey

GrumpyMonkey 4,319

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I'd also like to know some of what is going on in the background. I don't need to know everything, but if I knew, for example, that titles are weighted heavier than text, and bold text is weighted more than non-bold, etc., then that would help give me an idea about the significance of what I am seeing and what I should keep in mind to help improve the related note suggestions.

I will say that the related notes are working well for me so far, and seem quite relevant. I like this feature a lot.

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ZZZ

ZZZ 135

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I'm on version 5.0.3 and I agree. The "related notes" don't seem much related. In fact, they even suggest things that turns out to be funny or annoying...

So, how do you turn off this option or how can I "calibrate" evernote do relate things that are actually related?

Same here, they are so unrelated as to be ridiculous. I'd also like to be able to turn the feature off, though it's a minor irritation. The entire point of my notebook hierarchy and tagging is to create my own structure of how things are related. If this could use algorithms to do something truly cool I am all for it but right now it doesn't. And if it's wrong 95% of the time, than I'm not going to be paying attention for the 5% of the time it is doing something cool.

I'm also a little flabbergasted that it evidently doesn't use things such as tags to determine a relationship! I mean, if it's going to look for "related content", wouldn't it use tags (in addition to other factors)?! By not using tags it's effective *excluding* the content that is most likely to be related!

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icoco_de

icoco_de 33

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Just found this thread and I'm happy to see that I am not alone. :)

 


I like Evernote's "related notes" feature very much. So I wouldn't want to turn it off in the settings and lose it. But I would want to be able to manage the results by myself sometimes. I'd like to manually remove those "related notes" that don't match very well and/or add other notes that match better. As it is now I don't see how I could achieve this.

 

So I sent a request to the Evernote support team to give users a way to manually manage related notes.

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megsaint

megsaint 441

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I certainly don't see Related Notes as any kind of replacement for Search. What they do for me is surface things I might not have thought about in a while or remembered I even had. I use Evernote almost strictly as a filing cabinet. I don't use it for things to do or appointments or GTD. Perhaps the types of notes one has makes a difference?

I would find an explanation of the algorithm interesting.

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GrumpyMonkey

GrumpyMonkey 4,319

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I certainly don't see Related Notes as any kind of replacement for Search. What they do for me is surface things I might not have thought about in a while or remembered I even had. I use Evernote almost strictly as a filing cabinet. I don't use it for things to do or appointments or GTD. Perhaps the types of notes one has makes a difference?

I would find an explanation of the algorithm interesting.

 

Well-said. It isn't that I want to replace my search. Rather, I want a bit of serendipity. Something unexpectedly related that makes me think "I forgot I had that!" would be great. All of my research journal notes are related to all of my other research journal notes, most of the time yesterday or the day before. That doesn't really do me a lot of good! 

 

I've got one note with a list of papers I wrote at one university. In my related notes I have a note with a list of papers from another university that I had forgotten about -- that is the kind of related notes experience I am looking for myself. The more I know about the algorithm, the better. 

 

I can say one thing for certain, if you use templates (me) then you are hobbling the related notes feature. It cannot distinguish more subtle connections yet, so it seems to see that you are eating cereal for breakfast today (my health log), so you must want to see every other note where you eat cereal! No, that is silly. I would like to see every other note where I had the same or similar weight, though. I would also like to see notes where I ate something different for breakfast. That kind of stuff is a bit closer to serendipity for me.

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