I’ve found that after working with tags for a while, my tag list has gotten very long and it’s hard to get an overview.
One issue is that there are a lot of “minor” tags (tags used only once, e.g.) mixed in with my “major” tags (those I use regularly). So I found myself wanting for some way to flag or favorite tags themselves, to differentiate major from minor. This seems like it might get overly complicated though. And one way of dealing with this is via workspaces – i.e. assign a workspace to each of my major tags. This is my method at the moment.
To get to my real point, in thinking about the general problem of having too many tags, one thing I think could be really useful and not too complex is to separate out tags which apply only to archived drafts. In my tag list there are leftover tags which I never really want to use/see anymore. Since the drafts they applied to all are archived, I feel I am done with them. The drafts themselves are out of sight, but the leftover tags linger prominently in the UI and clutters the tags list.
Everything you described and the way you describe it, makes your archived minor tags sound redundant. Such that the issue might be the house keeping rather than the UI constraints.
Maybe you just require a way to remove minor tags from archived drafts?
I would use the logic of “not a major tag” and have or dynamically build a list (from inbox drafts?) of major tags. That is certainly something that you could create an action to do.
My feeling about archived drafts (as opposed to trashed) is that they are out of sight, but there if I need them. The same applies to tags here, I don’t want to lose the organization of my archived drafts entirely, but I want the tags to be out of sight. So this is why I don’t think this is a housekeeping issue.
As for using an action – sure I can create an action to list tags applying to inbox drafts only. Or just keep a list of major tags. But what I really want is for this to be reflected in the tag selection UI itself, and particularly to hide the tags I don’t want to see there.
That’s definitely a conflict then as tags are intended to be available and accessible app wide.
Your revision suggests that you still want to use the tags, therefore they are necessarily going to need to be tracked by the app and displayed. Arbitrarily filtering tags out of the UI based on folder categorisation seems to me to be counter to what the vast majority of users would want and expect.
I’m not suggesting it can’t or should not be an option, but it just seems like something quite low level to how the tags and UI have been designed to work. It might be tricky to do safely for all users and be quite niche.
Fair enough. My suggestion is that e.g. a simple division of the tag list, with active¹ tags sorted on top, would not be too obtuse/niche. But let’s agree to disagree on this
Are you just wanting them to be hidden in the tag filter panel? Because it sounds like that would largely be resolved by using the “Only Tags in Current Filter” option in the filter panel (in the … options menu of that panel).
It updates to available tags to filter to only display those that have a match in the current draft list display - so once you filter by one of your “major” tags, only “minor” that are assigned to a draft in the visible tab (i.e. “inbox”), will also be available for selection.
Sorry, I think I might have confused the discussion by talking about major/minor tags – that was mostly a lead in to the actual suggested feature: differentiating active/non-active tags in the tag list. Where my definition of an active tag is one that applies to any draft in the inbox.
As in my recent question about automating a reset of daily tasks, let me explain what prompted me to think about this today and maybe my intention will be clearer.
I have a tag for drafts relating to an ongoing project. Today I finished this project and archived all these drafts. Since the project is done, I don’t want the tag to stick around forever in the tag list. This is exacerbated by the tag name starting with A, so it’s also at the very top of the list
I have used the “Only Tags in Current Filter” setting which is very handy, but I don’t think it’s exactly the same as what I’m talking about. If this setting caused the tag list to filter depending on the visible tab (inbox/archive/trash) – even without any tag selected – then I think this would indeed cover my request.
Realised while typing this that a simple workaround would be to rename tags I don’t want to see with a prefix like “zzz”, making them move out of sight to the bottom of the list.
It’s a pretty specific type of need. It sounds like you are using tags for things specific to a single project, whereas most tags are used cross-sectionally – by which I mean the things that get assigned as tags are things that apply across many “projects” or whatever your basic organization unit is.
Not saying you are doing it “wrong” or anything like that; it just sounds like an atypical application of tagging – but I may be misunderstanding without more specific examples.
Other options might be to use in text markers like #hashtags for those type of meta data tags that do not apply more broadly - or, alternately, if tagging those is useful while the project is active, but not later, part of your archiving process for a project (which could be automated), might be to unassign those “minor” tags and move them into #hashtags in the text of the archived items - so you could still search/reference them, without them being “active” tags.
