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Comment by grok22 | Hacker News Reader

Does anybody find that graph view (like in Obsidian) useful? I play around with it for a while, but I don't really find it useful for any particular thing. Also overtime that graph grows too big to be visually easy to see patterns etc.

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Sometimes it's an alternative to search. If you don't know exactly what to search for but remember generally what it's related to, you can zoom in to nodes you know are somewhat related and find something you're looking for that way. I can't say it's something I do every day but it's come in handy.

The graph view in Obsidian would become particularly powerful if you could progressively filter brightness of items based on a search term. Or, for example, if you could make matching items brighter based on clicking / typing a tag name.

Yes, I do. As a very visual person, I love the graph view. It helps me visualise what I can only have an idea about in my head. And more often than not you forget a note ever existed. So when you see the graph view, you see what exactly is connected with it and helps you remember it better.

> Also overtime that graph grows too big to be visually easy to see patterns etc.

That is kind of the point with Zettelkasten (the method on top of which Obsidian and RoamResearch is built up on.). You have a huge repo where you see connections you didn't before.

I do! I've mainly found it to be inspirational when working creatively, especially when I'm writing a 'dirty first draft' of something, e.g. a research embryo, collecting interviews about a subject, doing brainstorming sessions, even book reviews. I've still got to come to grips with segmenting Obsidian vaults so that the cloud doesn't grow too far...

Soon we'll be able to define the graph to only display per folder; this is on the Obsidian roaemap.

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