[rorykoehler]

I recently started with Obsidian which I sync up via DropBox using a text editor on my machine or Markor on Android (still haven't selected an iOS equivalent.. tips welcome). I see Zettelkasten mentioned in tandem with Obsidian frequently but I can't figure out what it does? Is it just timestamping for notes?

[Feolkin]

Zettelkasten in digital form has been largely bastardized for some reason that I haven't quite figured out. The original ZK doesn't have timestamps and timestamps are such a terrible, uninformative, non-contextual way to codify notes. ZK originally uses a hierarchical and sequential numbering system that immediately tells you when it was created in relation to other notes and tells you its hierarchical relationship to neighboring notes (note 1a2 is a child of 1a; 1b is a sibling of 1a; and if 1 is an overarching theme, 1a, 1b, and 1a2 are each sub-ideas under that theme).

I've resorted to using the original numbering system manually, but I'm still waiting for a tool that understands them and knows how to work with them (or maybe I'll get fed up after a while and make my own).