Links to related topics. Relationship tables or topic-by-topic lists?

[Andrew Harvie <withanie -at- gmail -dot- com>]

G'day all.

   Currently building a new project using Flare.  For lists of related
topics, I'm weighing the merits of using relationship tables versus
putting links into each topic.  Both techniques seem to have their
merits.   The links are certainly easier to manage when adding a new
topic to the list is as easy as updating a row instead of adding a new
item to the list in X separate topic files.

  Somewhat complicating my design is that for tasks, I want to provide
a list of next steps (task-related topics to read next, if any).
These are almost always specific to the task just completed, so I
can't see them fitting into a rel-table nearly as well as, say, a list
of vaguely-related tasks.  It seems a bit ugly to create a hybrid of
links from a rel-table and topic-specific links, but maybe that's the
only way?

   So, relationship table or topic-by-topic list of links to related
information.  Which do you prefer and why?

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