FWIW, Luhmann is remembered because he was a prolific writer. Which necessarily involves the assembly of linear sequences.
Whether you find sequences (or any other organizational scheme) useful depends on what your system is for.
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I agree on this. And we may assume that most people, me included, do not aim to be the most prolific of all writers. Hence my assertion that …
I tried to follow the zettlekasten method with the numbering and everything. After a while I discovered I was getting too caught up in the method and not the outcome. Notes can be just as efficiently linked with tags, (wiki) links, keywords and the like. I abandoned the numbering for easier to understand note titles.
The key for me was the outcome. How would future me find this note? How does this note fit in the ‘web’ of all other notes I have? The hard, and important, part is looking at a new note and carefully considering:
- Where does it fit?
- What does it connect to?
- How will future me stumble across it?
Tags, links, summary notes, smart groups, and search give me multiple dimensions to connect and find new insights. For me, that was the point of zettlekasten. Finding unexpected connections and ideas in the future.
Now I have lit the fuse, I will quickly walk away… 
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I agree that from a subjective perspective, it’s the outcome, not the name, that matters. We devise our own methods, inspired by existing methods of others. My own method can have a name of my choice. I may name my own method Zettelkasten, or, if I indeed wish to, Netsaklettez. It goes without saying that, in my mind, these different names are references to the exact same thing.
However, in a public place (e.g. a forum), it’s not necessarily good practice to name things as one wishes. Let’s say I’m a college freshman looking for advice on how to take notes. I do a Google search and it seems everyone is using a method called Zettelkasten. Upon close inspection, however, it seems that Zettelkasten is just about anything. That gets me confused:
(1) What really is, and what is not, Zettelkasten?
Liberal use of a proper noun (in this case, Zettelkasten) does not facilitate exchange of useful information. That’s why some levels of gatekeeping are necessary on the use of objective notions in a social setting.
Let me reframe the objective Question (1) into a subjective probe:
(2) Does my method count as Zettelkasten if I have taken inspiration (but no more than that) from Luhmann’s original method? (echoes one of my previous reply)
There’s a Chinese saying that “Once your teacher, forever your patriarch” (一日为师，终身为父). Many of the people who …
… assume patronage of Luhmann on the same principle. However, there is a glaring problems in its application:
- If I have also taken inspiration from a dozen other personalities as well, then my method will bear the name of a medieval aristocrat …
- Or, the name of my method may be changed in a liberal way, depending on the occasion.
From an objective perspective, it’s a readily acceptable fact that a person has more than one teacher. It’s perhaps less agreeable, however, that a note-taking method has many interchangeable names. While the former facilitates mutual comprehension, the latter provides ground for hopeless confusion.
One may insist that his own method be called nothing but Zettelkasten. There is, of course, no obvious legal or moral restrictions on that, since Zettelkasten is (AFAIK) not a trademark. But I repeat: such insistence does not make their position intelligible to, and may in fact mislead, outsiders who are not familiar with that particular note-taking method.
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The distinction between The Zettelkasten as implemented by Luhmann, and a zettelkasten-like object (such as a digital system) is further complicated by the German practice of capitalizing nouns.
Luhmann’s original method was analogue; cards stored in a cabinet
All of us digital users have “taken inspiration”
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No matter which method we use, we will never find everything we want to find. The larger the amount of data, the greater the risk of overlooking something. This was also true for Luhmann. Who knows what else he would have written if he had found all his Zettel. But the opposite is also possible: Perhaps he would not have written some things if certain Zettel that he did not find had refuted a thesis. And even if he/we find all Zettel, we certainly won’t find those that we didn’t write. Something is always missing. We just don’t know what.
All Science (every piece of work) is also a product of coincidence. You recognize what you recognize. Later, someone else recognizes something else.
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How’s that complicating anything? At least, you know what is a noun and what isn’t. Which is sometimes not so obvious with English nouns/verbs.
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