One of the core ideas - atomicity of notes - is a practice valuable on its own, and maybe the fundamental value of Zettl. It has really helped me to reduce digital note sprawl, and a natural sort of topic taxonomy has revealed itself as I refactor notes and link between them. Ensuring that my notes are atomic means that, as I write, natural fracture lines emerge - and I follow them. I break notes up along these lines, keeping them linked if there’s a relationship - which may be parent/child, peer, or whatever.

Anyway, I don’t follow zettel.. itself, I agree broadly with you - the creator of it was a writer I think, and so your academia note holds. Adopting some its practices though have really reduced friction for me at the “where do I write this down?” and “where did I write this down?” points in my workflow.