What's broken is what we want to do with the bookmarks once we have them. The problem is we don't know exactly what that is. We tell ourselves that it's to "review it later", but that's not really it. It it were it would be simple to block out some time and do that, but we never actually do.
We don't know why we really make those bookmarks.
Bookmarking is not broken. We are.
I think a lot of us do know why we save bookmarks. I think your point depends on equating bookmarks with a "future todo reading list". (Similar concept: https://www.google.com/search?q=tsundoku)
But a more complete taxonomy of bookmarks:
- (1) saved urls for often visted websites like weather, status pages, etc. This saves time from having to recreate the google searches that finally lead you to that url or you found a deep url that bypasses a bunch of clicks.
- (2) an archival "memory" of urls you already read that may be referenced later. The bookmarks are not a "todo list" because the content has already been read. However, a future piece of information may make a connection back to some of them. The personal url archive acts as a more manageable subset of the entire web for reference.
- (3) a future reading list. Bookmarks are an alternative to opening up 100 tabs on the browser to read later
Most of my "bookmarks" are category (2) but I just save the urls in a text file instead of using a bookmark manager. For the really important references, I try to save as mhtml local files.
I gotta bookmark this comment and review it later. Keywords: digital gardening, data hoarding, Buddhism, hedonic treadmill.
I love your comment and share your approach: my bookmarks are what will pop up if I search something before Bing tries to take me somewhere else.
By bookmarking, I both accept that I do not have the time (not now or ever) and therefore I may never read this, unless serendipity or need drives me to type the exact same keywoard
> I gotta bookmark this comment and review it later
No, as that would be an attachment: instead, you should let this comment go :)
This change in perspective turns your library from a "failure of accomplishment" to a "curated resource for future enrichment".
Unfortunately these hard resets do not occur any more. So I have to close the tabs that I find not that interesting after some days. But closing tabs is much easier than deleting old bookmarks. I assume this is, because you have not commited yourself that much.
I wrote this as a manifesto - https://github.com/joelewis/readmelater and later went on to build a version of that vision not because I wanted to beat that idea to death, but just to scratch my own itch.
I want to be able to browse a curated collection of the web around some topic. I've come across a handful of really, really good tech blogs over the years. I'd like to be able to flip through them in one place. I'd like to be able to peruse my collection of in-browser games.
I want to get faster access to sites I use often. This might be seeding the autocomplete algorithm in the address bar, some kind of launcher, etc. I don't know what form this would ideally take, but it's a use case I want for bookmarks.
1) Link rot. I have bookmarks from as late as 2016, that 404 because the site is no longer hosted.
2) With smartphones, my browsing is split across PC and mobile, and I don't sync bookmarks across them (personal preference). This leads to more Google-first behaviour.
3) More and more stuff is getting bookmarked inside of apps. Reddit 'saves', Pinterest 'pins' and Twitter 'bookmarks'.
I find bookmarks work just fine for me in Firefox. However, it only works well for the 10 bookmarks that I use weekly.
If I bookmark anything and I don't use it soon after, it inevitably languishes. I have dozens of bookmarks from years ago for lectures I wanted to watch, tutorials I wanted to follow, games that I wanted to play, blog posts that I wanted to read. It was a list of things I wanted to be or do, but haven't taken the time.
A bookmarking tool can't change whether I have follow through. It's a tool to keep track of things, but I have to spend the time.
Better would be to save the entire page, not just the URL, as that would likely have more keywords that you'll remember later.
That's what I do, just save pages into a folder.