# Showing only backlinks for which there is no forward link

**URL:** <https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/showing-only-backlinks-for-which-there-is-no-forward-link/2754>\
**Category:** Tips\
**Created:** [September 12, 2022, 4:22pm UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/showing-only-backlinks-for-which-there-is-no-forward-link/2754 "2022-09-12T16:22:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![mlemerre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e480ec/32.png) [@mlemerre](https://org-roam.discourse.group/u/mlemerre)\
**Post date:** [September 12, 2022, 4:22pm UTC](https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/showing-only-backlinks-for-which-there-is-no-forward-link/2754/1 "2022-09-12T16:22:43Z")

</div>

When I am visiting a note A, it contains links to some relevant  
notes B, and the context of the link in A makes it clear why  
there is a link from A to B. Thus, if there is also a link from B  
to A, showing it in the list of backlink does not bring any  
useful information.

On the contrary, when there is a link from B to A but no link  
from A to B, it is very interesting to know this information when  
visiting A: maybe we forgot to add this link in A, or maybe we  
don’t want A to be too big (e.g. A describes an often used  
important concept, while B describes a minor one) but sometimes  
we want to know all the notes related to A.

For these reasons, I think it is more interesting to only show in  
the org-roam buffer for A, the backlinks from B to A for which  
there is no link from A to B.

Fortunately this can be easily achieved by modifying the function  
org-roam-backlinks-get to add this line:

`:and (not-in source [:select [dest] :from links :where (= source $s1)])`

below the two other :and in the function.

I am curious to know if others would be interested in this  
feature, and if it would be worthwile to propose it as an option  
for integration in org-roam.