The solitary private comment came from Larry Sanger who wrote:
I'm recommending we adopt subpages only after some difficult thought as
well as practical development of the concept.
I have two main reasons for advancing this resolution. First, a
reference work is more useful as it contains more kinds of reference
information beyond just prose summations of topics. I know this sounds
hubristic, but I really believe we have an opportunity to create an
information resource more useful than any in history--and one that will
be, after some years, as reliable as most mainstream reference works. We
just need to set up the framework and tell people it's all right to add
other types of information. Volunteers, and time, will do the rest.
Second, assuming we have a collection of different types of information on
a topic--each type on a different page--we need a way to group the types
together under the same heading. That's what the subpage scheme does. As
I hope the examples make clear, it's actually quite elegant and useful.
That brings me to the practical development of the concept. In the last
few weeks, various people have been demonstrating the subpage concept and
designing various "templates." The templates gather determine what
subpages exist for a topic, and automatically compile a list of links to
them, nicely formatted. Subpage templates will make it technically very
easy to manage subpages. Here's one good example of a page that uses a
horizontal template:
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/New_York_CityHere's another example, which uses a vertical template:
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Biology/DraftI've also examined some critical issues. Will adding new kinds of
content distract us from our main mission? My considered view is,
probably not; it will probably expand the number of people in our fold,
and help energize the project as a whole. Besides, it has been my notion
since the beginning of the project that it would eventually
expand into new kinds of content. Moreover, we already are hosting a
wide variety of kinds of content, from galleries, to tables of factual
information, to timelines. So this is not really a radical change--it is
just making official, accommodating technically, and setting policy for
something that we have been doing all along, on a small scale.
Another question is: shouldn't we perhaps postpone this expansion until we
are farther along in our development, perhaps? I don't think that's
necessary,and I actually think that this sort of visible development and
expansion, particularly since it organizes material of a sort already
being developed on the wiki, will most commonly be regarded as a positive
step forward. For some, like myself, it is actually an exciting
development. By expanding our scope now, we can give the project a needed
"shot in the arm." Moreover, the longer we put this off, the harder it
will be both to implement and to argue for.
Consider, we cannot put off internationalization (launching in other
languages) for a whole lot longer. But I would like to have developed the
entire CZ model, both content and governance, before exporting it to other
languages. Trying to coordinate the addition of a subpage scheme *after*
other languages were launched would be very difficult, I suspect. So this
is the right time, I think, to launch this initiative.
--
Now the Resolution 0004 is open for public discussion in this forum
for 7 days -
i.e.,
up to Thursday August 09, 2007, 04:30 hrs UTC.
Please feel free to make your comments here.
~Supten
