How to sort out and where to archive browser bookmarks?

Question

Recently, I realized I should really reduce my bookmark count. As in the 80/20 rule, I probably use less than 20% of my browsers bookmarks. This might be highlighted by the fact that currently I have 1021 bookmarks and 21 folders according to Chrome. Many folders are way too large.

Yet two important assumptions that I want to consider: 1). I usually bookmark websites with diigo for archival / reference, but the fact that I put them in my "bookmarks bar" means they are slightly more important or actionable than others. 2). While I will sure find outdated bookmarks (I hope that I'll find many such), I am sure that it will be hard to reduce the count, because I have no system for it yet.

Thus my questions:

1). Maybe I should categorize my bookmarks in categories of importance or value, like class A, B, C?

2). Where (and how) would you archive these links, assuming I want to try to keep them for quick reference, but outside my bookmark bar? Make a simple list in Evernote with a short link title?

3). How can I make this whole process most efficient? Reviewing 1000+ bookmarks will take a while.

Answer 1

I've already answered some of your questions. Not only use thematic tags, also temporal (2012, 2011,...), hierachical (interesting, important, timeless, frequently needed). Delicious can be nicely integrated in Firefox sidebar. The lack of a sidebar in Chrome detained me from using it. My system looks like this:

• 30-40 weekly used links are shown in the browser bar
• everything else tagged in delicious
• Firefox bookmark folder is only used for groups/browser sessions of tabs concerning a current topic (e.g. finding a flat in a city)

Remember that the point of services like delicious and diigo is also to find good links rated and tagged by other users. You can also import link collections. So you should really only save links locally that have a very personal context and importance. Otherwise you might build up redundance. Next time when you are tagging, rating, and saving a link you should ask yourself, could I find in the same time via google or delicious that link using their search engines?

Answer 2

I have long struggled and meditated on this problem. What I ultimately decided is that a repository of bookmarks, or of any kind of knowledge, is useless as a static collection and quickly degenerates into a backlog never to be accessed again. I abandoned my humongous Delicious account and have since been developing a little something that offers a different take on the subject.

And that is action-oriented browsing. I think that anything you clip or save or note down must have an intended action, now or in the future. Maybe you are saving a bookmark because you want to refer to it when you tackle some personal project you want to do someday/maybe. It must then be triggered by that project when you finally get to it. If you never get to it, the bookmark will die with the project, which is just as well.

As you said, most bookmarks will never be accessed again, but you don't know which ones yet. It's the long tail principle. We don't have time to do everything we want, but in the spirit of GTD, ideally we'd like to map out all that we could want to do, so we can always (say, weekly) review our priorities and be ready to pivot into new directions if situations, or our minds, change.

Even if you are only saving a cute picture of a cat, it is still actionable. Why are you saving it? That's the key question. It may be because you want to show it to some people, so it should be triggered in your next interaction with each of those people, and then you're done with that bookmark and you can let go of it.

Articles that you want to read or reread should by triggered by a reading list, or by study plans for particular subjects, or even by a blog post you want to write on the ideas you read on several of these articles.

It's all about what should trigger that bookmark to come into your attention again. You shouldn't need to remember to check it back on your own, or you may well never do.