Renaming the priority levels for more clarity?

[Cito]

Obsidian Tasks is currently using the following 4 priority levels:

• 🔽 (“low”)
• no symbol (“none”)
• 🔼 (“medium”)
• ⏫ (“high”)

The names in parentheses are used in the filters. Contrary to Task Warrior, “none” in Obsidian Tasks is a level between “low” and “medium”, not below “low”. This order of levels is used in the filter expressions and the default urgency score formula.

The reason for this ordering is that we want to facilitate entering tasks by removing the necessity to add an explicit priority level to “average level” tasks. Only for tasks with extraordinary priority (lower or higher than normal) you need to specify the priority, and it avoids cluttering the list of tasks with unnecessary symbols for normal priority tasks.

This has sometimes caused confusion (see for instance #1364) because the word “medium” seems to indicate that such a task has average/normal priority. The following names would be clearer:

• 🔽 (“low”)
• no symbol (“none” or ”medium”)
• 🔼 (“high” or “higher”)
• ⏫ (“top” or “highest”)

However, renaming priority levels like that would be backward incompatible with filters and cause even more confusion.
A less disrupting approach would be to keep the old names as deprecated aliases, like this:

• 🔽 (“low”)
• no symbol (“none”, aliases: “normal” or “standard” or “default”)
• 🔼 (“more”, aliases: “higher” or “medium” (deprecated))
• ⏫ (“top”, aliases: “highest” or “high” (deprecated))

Other possible aliases:

• 🔽/🔼 = “minor/major” (but these could also indicate the size of a task which does not need to correlate with priority)
• ⏫ = “urgent” (but, as Eisenhower said: "I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.") An urgent task could must not necessarily have top priority.
• 🔼 = “boosted”? or “prioritized”?
• ABC method names: 🔽 = C, default = B, 🔼 = A, ⏫ = A+
• ABCDE method names (E = eliminate, no need for this): 🔽 = D, default = C, 🔼 = B, ⏫ = A
• MoSCoW method names: “Would, Could, Should, Must”?

Another thing to keep in mind: It would be good to use names with different starting letters that can be used as access keys in the task creation dialog.

Let's have a small discussion about this. Do you think it makes sense changing the names for priorities? What alias names do you prefer? Other suggestions?

[claremacrae]

Thanks for this great summary.

Complete trivia: I've moved this to the category to 'General', instead of category 'Ideas: Any New Feature Requests go in Issues please'.

If what arises out of this is a new vocabulary that there is consensus that it is really worth doing, then may I ask for a list of the required steps to be written up in a new Feature Request issue.

(So that if someone ends up implementing it as a new feature, they only need to read a summary, and not need to synthesise the whole discussion in their head.)

I can't change the past, but for the future, for my own wellbeing of workload, I am trying to keep a clear separation between the things that are actionable (in Issues) and other things (Discussions). See #1168 for the background.

[FabianoLothor]

Let me ask you guys, is it possible to use emojis in the queries or it's a limitation?

[Cito]

Let me ask you guys, is it possible to use emojis in the queries or it's a limitation?

You mean writing a filter like is above 🔼 ? No, that's currently not possible. The symbols in the future will also become configurable, and then you would need to rewrite the queries.

[FabianoLothor]

@Cito what about be able to manually define the priority names?

Each one would be able to rename the priorities according with their own vault needs.

Following this approach, the plugin would not even need to care about backwards compatibility, by default would still use the current ones, but would enable the possibility of change them.

Following this approach, the user would know the "alias" of each priority level ABCD(E?) and use the filters according with them,

[Cito]

@Cito what about be able to manually define the priority names?

We still need to come up with reasonable default names. Obsidian Tasks gives a certain meaning to fields and enum values like priorities, e.g. when ordering tasks or when creating a new entry from a recurrent task. Therefore I think it is crucial to give the fields and enums names that best convey that meaning to make the purpose of fields and connected application logic crystal clear.

Whether or not we allow additional custom aliases is another question. But actually I do not really like the idea. First, because it complicates the code and its maintenance. Second, because people will inevitable start to abuse fields by giving them different names and then wonder why they do not behave the way they want. Third, because predefined field names make it easier to add reasonable and unique keyboard shortcuts in the task creation dialog.

But maybe at some point we allow changing the symbols or text representations. Then you could use letters like A, B, C or alias names for the priorities. But in the filters you would still refer to the fields and enums using the standard names.

[claremacrae]

Hi both,

There have been a few times during my shepherding of Tasks where there have been discussions about naming of a concept, or changing possible values or behaviour of a concept, that have tended to show that different people just have different preferences and ideas, and trying to change one user to use something different because of another one's preference is not a good idea.

In the case of urgency, for example, several iterations of discussion eventually revealed an idea for a more general feature to replace a hard-coded scoring rule. In that case, that feature would be a clear benefit to users, and I felt that was a really good outcome.

But honestly, with names of priorities, if the two of you haven't already immediately come up with an agreed set of new names that you are confident every user will understand, then I doubt it would be worth the effort to change them - and have to maintain backwards compatibility.

I don't want to stop the discussion, but I do want to say that, to my knowledge, there have not previously been any strong requests to change the naming of priorites, and so the bar for changing the vocabulary right now is very high indeed, in my opinion.

One alternative that might fly is to introduce a number as an alternative priority. The only decision then would be whether 1 is low or high. (If a user wanted to use 9999, so be it)

It's not something I would personally implement, but I would accept a pull request for it if the name was reasonably obvious, and it was fully tested and fully documented.

[FabianoLothor]

Now using Obsidian Tasks after a few months and being more familiarized with its features I built my own custom prioritization schema.

I decided to use emojis, but it could be really anything.

This way I don't need to care about use the built-in priority of the plugin, giving me much more flexibility and also having the possibility of have multiple sets of task types with different kinds of priorities (if needed, but it isn't my case).

I could prioritize a few tasks using emojis, others using numbers, others using ABCDE, or whatever I want and just filter them accordingly with their "type" in a meaningful page for them.

Sharing below the queries needed to achieve my desires:

[FabianoLothor]

I'm still trying to sort them in a single query, but I didn't figure out how yet, so I split them in multiple queries.

It would be great to be able to sort them in a single query, doing something like sort description by ['🟥', '🟧', '🟨', ..] (like defining a new alphabetic order for some icons/terms).

But it isn't intuitive, wondering if it makes sense to have this kind of feature.

A more fancy and intuitive approach could be: sort by description.replace('🟥', 1).replace('🟧', 2)...

[claremacrae]

@FabianoLothor

Understood.

That is great idea but is unrelated to this topic of renaming priorities, and so will never be tracked here.

Please feel free to fill in a feature request for a custom sort facility, and include your text above as the motivation.

(There may be a custom grouping feature coming soon, and it might be possible to extend it to sorting)

[FabianoLothor]

Thank you @claremacrae.

I'll open a feature-request with this suggestion.

[claremacrae]

Just to note that Tasks 3.9.0 added two new priorities:

Highest: 🔺
Lowest: ⏬