Allow multiple page names, or aliasing, for better linking

[yifanyin]

For example, one can have a page [[climate change]] with aliases as "global warming" and "Klimawandel" so that under linked and unlinked references, all the aliases show up together. Cross-post from #828.

[jsmorabito]

This is a link to the problem formulation done by the roam team awhile ago: https://roamresearch.com/#/app/help/page/birF2miOi

They used the term "synonyms" which i don't think is right. "alias" is definitely closer to the idea

[refinedrobot]

Here is a slightly wild idea or food for thought:

(1) make it so these aliases are not necessarily reciprocal;

(2) make an option so that you can toggle on/off whether to "show alias mentions" in linked references;

(3) make alias mentions first-order only (or at least make this an option).

My argument is threefold:

1. Sometimes all a's should link to B, but not all B's should link to a.
2. People already accomplish point (1) using complex or nested pages.
3. This would be very useful for controlling what shows up in linked references.

All a's link to B; not all B's link to a

People already accomplish this with complex or nested page titles: [[a [[B]]]] will always link to both [[a [[B]]]] and [[B]], but obviously not every instance of [[B]] will link to the full [[a [[B]]]]

For example, if I want all mentions of Charles Dickens's novels to show up on my [[Charles Dickens]] page, I can do this:

• [[A Tale of Two Cities by [[Charles Dickens]]]]
• [[David Copperfield by [[Charles Dickens]]]]
• [[Bleak House by [[Charles Dickens]]]]
• Etc.

Linked references

This allows me to go to the Linked References of my [[Charles Dickens]] page and scan through all mentions of his novels. If I do it like this, I don't just get one mention of [[Charles Dickens]] from my [[A Tale of Two Cities]] page (which... mostly useless); instead, every time I mention a Tale of Two Cities anywhere in my database, those mentions will now show up with the block and context right there on the [[Charles Dickens]] page.

Obviously, with complex pages, this is limiting and very quickly becomes unwieldy

What if I want to do the same thing to make those novels show up on my [[novels]] page? Or my [[Victorian novels]] page (or, if I'm using lots of fancy complex pages... my [[[[Victorian]] [[novels]]]] page)? I can't jam all that stuff into one page title.

What if I want to make all mentions of [[Charles Dickens]] show up on my [[Victorian people]] page? If I make [[Charles Dickens]] a complex page in the same kind of style — like this: [[Charles Dickens | [[Victorian people]]]] — then I'll break my novel links, since they would now look like this: [[A Tale of Two Cities by [[Charles Dickens | [[Victorian people]]]]]] This would cause those novels to show up on my [[Victorian people]] page, which is wrong. Even though every instance of A Tale of Two Cities is, in a sense, an instance of Charles Dickens; and Dickens himself is an instance of a Victorian person; Dickens's novels are not themselves Victorian people (hence my note about turning off second-order alias mentions).

A simpler option would just be to tell my database something like this:

Any mention of [[A Tale of Two Cities]] is also an instance/mention of the following:

• [[Victorian]]
• [[Victorian novels]]
• [[Charles Dickens]]
• [[1859]]

If links/pages/mentions work like this, then I can now use my [[Victorian]] page as a catch-all for a TON of stuff, and potentially use include/exclude filters in pretty amazing ways.

By contrast, putting #[[Victorian]] or #[[novels]] or whatever at the top of my [[Tale of Two Cities]] page accomplishes almost nothing in terms of what actually shows up on my [[Victorian]] page's Linked References. Theoretically, you could sort of do some of the stuff I'm talking about with queries... but when I think through what it means for actually interacting with my database, it's not the same.

Anyway... as I said. It's an idea. I could be missing something painfully obvious in terms of contradictions or what this might bork up.

[shanberg]

Another case to consider here is linking contextually-descriptive text to a page or block, without that link becoming an alias across the entire database.

E.g., "Click here to learn more", where click here is linked to a block or page, but not every instance of "click here" in your database is linked to that same block or page.

[kirillnad]

Logseq has a solution for this: https://logseq.github.io/#/page/term%2Falias

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Obsidian:
Starting in 0.9.16, you're able to specify the "aliases" property in a note's YAML front matter like so:

---
aliases: [AI, Artificial Intelligence]
---

Please note that this section must be placed at the very top of a note to take effect.

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It would be also great to use wildcars in alias name.
Example:
Page title: "To do something"
Alias: "do* something"

It will work for "doing something", "does something" etc.
Very important for languages where words has many forms