Links are one of the most popular features advertised by RPG campaign management software. Obsidian also provides powerful linking capabilities. But without a strategy, it’s easy to waste time with meaningless links.
When to Use Links
We don’t need to create links at all within Obsidian. The Backlinks and Outgoing links core plugins each have an “Unlinked mentions” section in the sidebar that shows mentions without the need for linking anything at all. But there are a number of cases where linking is useful.
- Shared content. When we publish our notes to the web or share them with others, links help those audiences discover content.
- Graph view. Obsidian’s Graph view core plugin relies on internal links to generate lines between nodes. This can give you a high-level view of connections throughout your vault.
- Page previews. Obsidian’s Page preview core plugin provides previews when hovering over internal links.
- Easy reference. If we just want a quick way to know if we’ve created a note for something, a link is an easy reference.
We can link every mention within a note, or more simply the first mention of a thing. For example, if I have a note that references another 10 times, I don’t necessarily need 10 links. But there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just more effort. We can also link a note that does not yet exist but might someday. That’s a good indicator for our future self to come back and create it when relevant.
Types of Links
Obsidian supports two major types of linking:
- Wikilinks:
[[LinkedNote]] - Markdown:
[LinkedNote](path/to/LinkedNote.md)
Wikilinks provide more functionality within Obsidian: search files to link, search headings, link headings, link blocks, and more. Most Community plugins also support features built around Wikilinks.
Markdown links are part of the core Markdown specification. They are widely used and supported beyond Obsidian. So which should we use?
Either is a fine choice but if we’re using Obsidian, we might as well get the built-in features of Wikilinks. The format is not new or unique to Obsidian. It’s also easy to find scripts and Community plugins to transform Wikilinks into Markdown links if we ever needed to change them.
Summary
Links are powerful and an easy way to connect ideas in Obsidian. But they’re not required to build an awesome campaign management setup. With a bit of strategy, we can choose the best type of linking for our needs.
Game on.