, AndyC wrote

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So searching isn't something people want to do because you think it's slow. And it's slow because you've turned off indexing, which sensible people don't do. And you don't see the flaw in your argument. Really?

Nice straw man. That's not what I said. Indexes make searching fast, but indexes take a long time to build and take up resources. Furthermore, searching doesn't guarantee you'll find what you're looking for. There's a trade-off. The trade-off isn't worth it, if you organize your files. When you organize your files, you know exactly where to look without searching. If the file happens to be missing, then you can still use search as a possible means of finding the file, but the search will run slower. Big deal. I can live with slower searches on the rare occasions that I actually need to do a search, but organizing by folders doesn't mean that I have to give up searching capability entirely.

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If you have to rely on your personal intranet that nobody else on Earth is likely to be using, which presumably lacks searching because you think it's pointless, then I can't help but think you are perhaps struggling to make an actually applicable scenario.

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I really have no idea WTF you're talking about here.

"File" hosting lets you create folders because, surprise surprise, they're still built around a file based paradigm. I can't quite believe I actually had to write that.

Uh, if I'm not mistaken, we've always been talking about files. Did we, at some point, start talking about organizing baseball cards or Beanie Babies?

As for Photo sharing services, you'll notice that for the most part these don't constrain you to a photo belonging in a single album. Nor do they prevent you from instantly viewing photos based on different criteria (such as who is tagged in the photo or whatever).

So people are too dense to figure out how nested folders work, but they have no problem understanding that a single photo can exist in multiple albums simultaneously?

Look, you lost your entire argument right here. 

This is the essence of a search based system. There is absolutely no requirement for a hierarchical file system to underpin this. You'll also notice they don't do nesting of photo albums, because people just don't think of their photos like that (neither do they most things).

In a file system that allows for hierarchical folders, there is no requirement to make your folders hierarchical. You can make all your folders one level deep, if you want, but you've been trying to argue the case that folders of any level aren't needed because of search capability.