I've used personal wikis for many years. It's easy to link between notes, it's searchable. I used camelcased words as hashtags. I had several thousands notes in it, personal and work related.
Then the smartphone came and took over, and there was no good wiki-app and in the browser didn't really work. Since then I've switched to Evernote. Again more than 1000 notes without transferring the wiki to Evernote. I can get lost sometimes, and then it needs some work to clean up tags and notes.
> OneNote or even just a text file for a while, I get overwhelmed every time I open it to take a note as it is littered with stuff that I no longer need
I don't understand your problem. Evernote can be sorted on date of last access, so you always see the most recent notes on top. You don't want a collection of notes, but you want auto-archive? Isn't auto-archive the collection?
> but found no tool that lets me just start on a blank page and ignore the history.
In evernote and probably any note taking app you can open a new note and start clean.
Then the smartphone came and took over, and there was no good wiki-app and in the browser didn't really work. Since then I've switched to Evernote. Again more than 1000 notes without transferring the wiki to Evernote. I can get lost sometimes, and then it needs some work to clean up tags and notes.
> OneNote or even just a text file for a while, I get overwhelmed every time I open it to take a note as it is littered with stuff that I no longer need
I don't understand your problem. Evernote can be sorted on date of last access, so you always see the most recent notes on top. You don't want a collection of notes, but you want auto-archive? Isn't auto-archive the collection?
> but found no tool that lets me just start on a blank page and ignore the history.
In evernote and probably any note taking app you can open a new note and start clean.