Do you bother with parent tags?

[N.A. 21]

Hi there.

Those users who is relying extensively on tags for organisation or quick filtering may/will have a nested tag structure going deep 1-2-3 levels.

My question is: Whenever a new note is created which qualifies for some child tag, do you also tag it with all of the parent tags the child tag is under?

Tools like filterize can allow this action to be automated, but paying premium for a premium is a luxury.

Any advice will be appreciated.

Cheers.

Naz.

[PinkElephant 8,115]

My tag structure is 2 levels deep. The top level is just category and helps with housekeeping, and not applied to notes.

Until the tag experience is unified especially between those OSes I use (iOS, MacOS and Win10, in sequence of usage), it does not make sense for me to really „deep-tag“. 

[Atul Mishra 14]

1 hour ago, N.A. said:

Those users who is relying extensively on tags for organisation or quick filtering may/will have a nested tag structure going deep 1-2-3 levels.

I also have the same question. Thanks for asking it.

[DTLow 5,736]

3 hours ago, N.A. said:

My question is: Whenever a new note is created which qualifies for some child tag, do you also tag it with all of the parent tags the child tag is under?

No, I rarely tag with parent tags
Only if I had a specific need that would require a search using the parent tag

I also prefix my tagnames to show the hierarchy.  
For example, my budget tags are budget-housing, budget-food, budget-entertainment, ....
If I wanted to filter for all budget notes, the search is tag:budget*
This also lists the tags better when the tags are displayed alphabetically with no hierarchy

[Atul Mishra 14]

1 hour ago, DTLow said:

For example, my budget tags are budget-housing, budget-food, budget-entertainment, ....

How many levels of tags do you use? If it is more than two, do you also prefix the grandchild with the grandparent tagname.

I use 4 levels.

[DTLow 5,736]

2 hours ago, Atul Mishra said:

How many levels of tags do you use? If it is more than two, do you also prefix the grandchild with the grandparent tagname.

Yes, although long names can be problematic
There's a point where you may want to use multiple tags instead

For example Budget-EntertainmentLottery, Budget-EntertainmentGeneral

Note: When assigning tags, I don't actually type the entire name.  I start typing Budget and a filtered list appears

I use a prefix character for my four top level tags ?!@. (?Who, !What, @Where, .When)   All child tags are prefixed with the same character

 

[CalS 5,280]

7 hours ago, N.A. said:

Whenever a new note is created which qualifies for some child tag, do you also tag it with all of the parent tags the child tag is under?

Nope.  I use parent tags strictly for organization.  I do not precede the child tag name with the parent tag name.  For example I have a tag named Accounts, under that tags for Bank, Credit, Insurance, etc., then the meat which is the tag for the actual entity name, Amex for example.  

There are a few tag types I precede by a single character, _ for fiscal years (_2019), = for people (=Lastname), ! for TSW (!1-Now), . for projects (.Projectname).  That way an _ or = or ! or . entered into a tag drop down will produce a list.  

End of the day, parent tags are just for organizing in my use case.  I have a bit over 400 tags for almost 43 k notes at this point.  Don't add many any more other than projects or trips (preceded with yyyy.mm.dd for ease of finding).

[gazumped 11,666]

Another vote for child tag,  not parent.  I do use Filterize as well as Evernote,  having subscribed to both.  Don't see it as paying extra to overcome limitations to Evernote's system - more like buying a SatNav as well as a car;  it's an extra level of sophistication that many users may or may not need.

[PinkElephant 8,115]

One additional thing: It is important to do some "housekeeping" with the tags. A new tag is created very easily - spelling, not remembering there is already one for the same topic, changing priorities like abandoned projects etc.

So I review my tags (on Mac or PC, where this is easier, not on iOS, where there is no nesting) every ±3 month, eliminating those with little usage and no clear perspective. Here the nesting helps by giving a certain order to the cleaning action.

Newly created tags (especially when created on the fly from iOS or WebClipper) are often without "parent", so I put them into the right place during this as well.

[jefito 5,589]

Quote

Do you bother with parent tags?

Not too much, no. Oh, I have my tags more or less organised in trees, but I don't use the trees in any meaningful way for search or note navigation. My tags comprise a vocabulary for describing my notes; I don't sort the words I know in my head in order to describe something.

Also I don't use artificial prefix tags (Book-Mystery, Book-History, etc.) either; that way lies madness, to me. It has scaling problems. Say I have "book", "movie", and "TVShow" tags. To describe a mystery book, I would then use "mystery" and "book" tags.  If I to describe a mystery movie, "mystery" and "movie" cover that. I don't need separate Blah-Mystery tags for each category of Blah. So to describe books, that takes four tags , as opposed to 3 for "Book-Mystery, Book-History, etc. However, to add movies into the mix, I add a "movie" tag (total of 5, but in the prefix tag case, I need 6 total. Add TV shows, I add a "TVShow" tag for a total of 6, but the prefix method requires 9. And so on. Doesn't work for me.

[DTLow 5,736]

 

8 hours ago, jefito said:

Also I don't use artificial prefix tags (Book-Mystery, Book-History, etc.)...I would then use "mystery" and "book" tags..."movie", and "TVShow" tags

So, separate tags instead of a single combination tag

Do you have any controls in place to make sure the note receives the required tag assortment
I use a script on my Mac; for example the note type is Review, and requires tags for Medium and Genre

[jefito 5,589]

8 hours ago, DTLow said:

So, separate tags instead of a single combination tag

Yes. Basically you need fewer individual tags to describe notes that require combinations of tags. Plus, because there's no prefix/infix search in Evernote (tag:*blah dosn't work), you can't search for an embedded piece of a compound tag. I do understand the case where tag:blah* could be useful, but I don't really use it. *shrug* Single tags seem more natural, and that's what seems to work best for me.

8 hours ago, DTLow said:

Do you have any controls in place to make sure the note receives the required tag assortment

Not really, no. The web clipper can often guess reasonably for articles I clip. I use pre-tagged template notes in some instances. Otherwise it's pretty much ad hoc. For my work notes, I sometimes do a review for more recent notes to ensure that tags are OK, but that's not a regularly scheduled thing. If search were more powerful and we had the ability to apply rules on the basis of searches, a la GMail, then I'd probably make some use of that. Sadly, Evernote for Windows has no equivalent to the Mac scripting support, but I muddle along anyways.

[DTLow 5,736]

23 hours ago, CalS said:

For example I have a tag named Accounts, under that tags for Bank, Credit, Insurance, etc., then the meat which is the tag for the actual entity name, Amex for example.  

When working with an alphabetic tag list, I find it useful if all my accounts are listed together
For example Account-Amex, Account-bbbbbbbb, Account-cccccccc

Also useful for when I've forgotten what an Amex is (senior moment), Account-Amex credit card

[Gear64 43]

Like a few others have mentioned I only have two layers.  A very generalized parent with a symbol prefix.  The symbol prefix helps give context to the child.  The children are moderately generalized. I use tags for general filtering then intitle, content type, and content keywords in note for specifics.  This allows for relatively few tags.  I'll likely still evolve over time as I only have 3k notes.

For instance: tag:#fitness intitle:shoulder rehab

[CalS 5,280]

1 hour ago, DTLow said:

When working with an alphabetic tag list, I find it useful if all my accounts are listed together

For example Account-Amex, Account-bbbbbbbb, Account-cccccccc

Also useful for when I've forgotten what an Amex is (senior moment), Account-Amex credit card

Not that hard for me to just remember the account. at this point.  Typically it’s right in front of me anyway, be it downloading, forwarding, whatever.  

My rules for tags have been keep them as few as possible, short, simple, and have them be what they are - Amex, Amazon, Statement, PC.Stuff, Carname, Houseaddress, etc.  Then like  @jefito I use a couple of tags when need be.  

Mostly I use the tags to control search results size, winnow so to speak.  Then use text search if need be.  Horses for courses.