Thread by @Jeanvaljean689

OK, people get ready, I'm going to assay a lightning-summary of @RobertHaisfield 's webinar on further unlocking the powers of {{query}}ing in @RoamResearch .

Here are a few of the key things that I gleaned.

1. Querying allows you to have "conversations with your past self."

2. To make those conversations optimally useful, you will want to learn to be artful about what hashtags you choose, and also how you arrange those hashtags.

3. One heuristic to use as you make these decisions is, "under what conditions will future-me want to find this?"

4. It's also worth taking a moment to familiarize yourself with the different behaviors of a query under these different conditions:

a) when hashtags are all inline in the same block,
b) when they are parent-child relationship,
c) and when they are arranged as "siblings".

5. These different behaviors, above all, should determine *how* you create your metadata for particular classes of entity (i.e. books, contacts in your CRM, etc)

6. Gradually, you will also likely learn a style of "writing in blocks" or "phrases", as you write with this in mind.

7. A great rule of thumb I learned from Robert is that "if you would utter an idea in a single breath in spoken language, it's probably a block"

8. Indents beneath a block would then be used to break down an idea, build on, compare, elucidate, etc

9. Otherwise - one idea/block

10. You can even go for a hybrid Zettel system of giving blocks ID tags - starting simply, with, e.g. "1ai", "1aii", etc. as Luhmann did!

11. The queries themselves, once you've established their use-case, can be block-referenced! To re-use a query, give it a simple title.

11b. Then you can re-use it just by typing "((..." and the first few letters of its title. Robert likes to call these "saved views".

12. queries are very useful for grouping "aliases". suppose you realize that you interchangeably used "[[free stuff]]" and "[[giveaways]]"...

12.b. Just join them in a query with {or: [[free stuff]] [[giveaways]]}

13. Queries are also "collectors". E.g, one use-case I have is under people's pages, there is a query for {and: #quotes and (e.g.) [[Snoopy The Dog]]}, so it serves to pull in all quotes from that person.

14. Queries are, of course, often used for TODO's when you want to hashtag them #urgent, #nextweek or whatever.

15. Queries can tag things in shared databases, e.g. a comment can be marked #attn [[George]] and then George changes the tag to #seen [[George]], to show he's seen it

16. OBSERVE YOUR OWN BEHAVIOR. The best way to write useful queries is ... duh duh DAAAA ... actually pay attention to the kinds of questions you have, about your own writing!

17. Cool thing I never knew before - a block reference can be a query argument!

17.b. i.e. a "node" address, like ((fgh3ts76)) , can be part of a query. (This is more useful than you 1st realize. More on that later, maybe)

18. Use plain-text descriptors of queries... can be inline wi/ query text. So you'll recognize them later AND you can recycle them.

18b. "Recycle, you say?" Yes - like, e.g., if I am making a practice of using idea #13, above, on every "person"'s page, I just make a re-usable template called "quotes query" or whatever, and use "((quot..." to bring it up.

OK that's a brief summary of what I learned...

thanks @RobertHaisfield, for showing us more of your workflow and what you've worked out - super helpful! Really appreciate your tour.

One last thing - in a small-group breakout, a few of us were talking about a use-case

that is currently a challenge, namely, one-way, relational tags.

Suppose we want to be able to use a hashtag to denote a NON-commutative relationship, e.g. "Jane is Sue's boss". For now, this remains tricky - queries return "flattened" results, so J::S and S::J are the same.

I thought about this for a while and I came up with a solution I like. I wrote it up because I'll probably keep developing it.

for now, you can find it here:

mattbrockwellmd.substack.com/p/on-formal-sy…

comments welcome!

and finally, many thanks @RobertHaisfield!

22. I cannot emphasize this enough - *observe your own behavior*.

I learned a lot from watching other skilled users;

But the real AHA moments for me happened when I realized there was something past-me was trying to do,

that present-me can do better.

https://twitter.com/Jeanvaljean689/status/1312515785386934275?s=20

23. One last obs about @RobertHaisfield 's workshop -

It is sinking in, for me, that

Understanding the ways that querying works, to resurface things later, I have FAR fewer hang-ups about which page any given note belongs on.

Local relationships matter more.

it's freeing.