Thread by @considerITman

Ok, #roamcult (where are we on the topic of name change?) - here's some thought on true aliases in #RoamResearch : I need them. Thanks for coming to my TED talk. For reals: True aliases are necessary to get #RoamResearch to where we need it to be for actual networked thought. 1/

Right now, there are just too many missing connections to really live up to the concept of "networked thought". Let me give you an example: I recently read an article and found the word "communities" to be relevant enough a concept to link it. 2/

So I added the link and opened it in the sidebar. To my surprise, it had only two links. Something was off. So I did some digging and what did I find? A [[community]] page with significantly more links. Shoot. 3/

In this very case, I just did an alias on "communities" like this: [communities]([[community]]). But honestly, that can not be the answer every time. This whole thing kicked me right out of my workflow because I had to go hunt for the right page and add the alias for it. 4/

Had I overlooked this in my writing process, I would have missed the connection. I would have opened the [[community]] page at some point and I would have looked at the links. Only to miss this article entirly. 5/

I had that situation before, where I went like: "Wait a second. I know I read someting about that in this and that book…" and I went and looked it up and manually created the link by adding an alias or a tag. How often did I miss it? No idea… 😕 6/

But wait, there's more. So far we covered singular and plural. Let me give you a funny one next: Britisch English and American English. [[color]] and [[colour] don't point to the same page 😐 7/

Also: Synonyms - can't think of an example for the life of me right now, but you know what I mean. Right? Right. 8/

Here's my biggest one: A lot of us (me included) live in two worlds, language wise. @CatoMinor3 posted about that too, recently.

https://twitter.com/CatoMinor3/status/1379321728816590850?s=20

- and certainly more that I don't have on the radar right now. 9/

For me it's German and English - I do most of my work in German and most of my research in English. That constantly breaks my workflow. Can just link [[Liebe]] oder do I need to alias [[Love]]? 10/

Sometimes I end up translating my thoughts to English. That's quite taxing for my flow, to say the least. This feature is honestly a huge pain point for me. I've put quite some thought and work into setting up my graph in the last few months and it hurts that I still 11/

lose so many potential connections and so much momentum. Imho this needs to be one of the top items on the (nonexistent 😉) @RoamResearch roadmap. 12/

In the meantime, if you're in the same boat, check out the page synonyms extension by @roam_js here: roamjs.com/docs/extension… (It doesn't fit my personal workflow, but maybe it fits yours) 13/🧵