I think of MOCs as “topics” that naturally arrise through my notes. Let’s say I had notes for Kayaking, Snowboarding, Rooftop Parkour, Sky Diving, Hiking, and Rock Climbing all written months apart. I may later realize I should create a MOC called “Physical Activities” that captures all of them.

I try to utilize folders sparingly, but it’s a tough habit to break. The problem with folders is that they’re hierchal. I don’t want an “Physical Activities” folder, because that limits things. Perhaps I’ll have another MOC called “Fear of Heights” that also has Rooftop Parkour and Skydiving. It’s about creating maximum discoverability.

Tags I use to group things so I can find them with Dataview. For example, if I create a literature note, I’ll tag it “Source” and have a sub tag for type, like “Source/Newspaper”. As with MOCs, multiple tags can be used which helps with not seeing notes as a folder hierarchy.

I don’t use MOC’s. Folders and tags.

I use folders and tags for organisation (Auto Note Mover puts my notes where I want them based on how I tag them. But I use AutoMOC to make a big list of connections that I then reorganise into categories. It’s a really good way to make sense of things after I’ve built up a good bank of ideas on a topic. But I don’t use them for navigation; I’d much rather go through search or quick switcher.

So far I only use MoC for listing what comes in through Omnivore. Omnivore is a read it later app that has amazing integration with Obsidian. You can bring over whole articles or what you highlighted in Omnivore (that’s what I do) tagged and all. I have it set up so it drops all incoming into an omnivore folder in my vault and then I have MoCs (dataview) that list the articles/highlights per topic. For example in my leather craft folder I have a MoC that lists all links to articles saved and tagged with “leathercraft”. So I don’t have to search through my omnivore folder (which is structured by date saved).

Otherwise I think I don’t have enough content for a single topic to have a MoC yet. I might eventually if the folder gets so full you have to scroll far. But I link a lot within notes so I mostly jump around like that.

What is a MOC and a LYT?