How does one add a backlink to a Nostr event/note? \ stacker news ~nostr

I'd like to use #Nostr as a personal knowledge management tool, so that events and notes, when they are linked, can be retrieved and form a network of notes that can store a lot of information and can generate insights. This is even better with #Nostr because as more people use Nostr and can access these notes and add their own responses and insights, it will take on a life of its own.

For this to happen, the notes will need to be forward and backlinked. This means if I mention a note note1xxx1 or an event in my event/note that I write (let's say this note's link is note1xxx2, somewhere in the note1xxx, there needs to be a link to the published note note1xxx2 and so on. If this were possible, then the notes would be connected with each other forming a merkel tree of sorts where knowledge in one node would be made visible in another.

At the moment, there are no protocols that does this (neither AT nor ActivityPub protocol is designed to facilitate this). There are standalone apps that allow back and forth this sort of arrangement (say apps such as Obsidian (obsidian.md) or zettlr, or logseq, but these do not live on these protocols.

I am keen to hear from you what or how might we add backlinks to the notes or how could that be facilitated? One way might be to add a backlink to an existing note soon as one mentions the note somewhere (a client will pull in from the relays that transmit this other note), or make a bot that will track which notes are mentioned and will add a response to the notes/events.

I have not figured out how this might be possible, but would be keen to learn more.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @OriginalSize 20 May 2023

I like your bot idea and would build on it. Direct embedding of note IDs is "chicken and egg" but I think the following might be a good way to do it:

You have a bunch of independent notes as usual. Then you have a another note or chain of notes which define the links between. Then it's just a bit of code for a client, which would need to be specific to this use case anyway, to render the notes, links and structure in a familiar way.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @arinbasu OP 20 May 2023

Yes I agree with how you write it, (n number of independent notes and another note or chain of notes to define the links between. What I have in mind is a bot that listens to any link I place on a note and informs or edits or modifies that page to insert the linking note to it to build a list of notes that link to this note. This can either be in the form of direct edit or modification of that note or as a reply to it by the bot which then continues to edit that response. I am not clear on this.