There's a cartoon that really would express this best...

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

A professor drones on, filling the board with equations, and says "it is obvious"...

Student: "Sir, is that actually obvious?"

Class dismissed.

Class returns, several days later. Professor, unshaven, apparently without sleep, but surrounded by pizza boxes, turns, and says, with a manaical expression, "Yes...it is obvious!"

I have feelings like that about a very information-filled graphic I just used in a technical article. The graphic is Image:NavalC4Iarch-with CEC.png. It went into an article on "Cooperative Engagement Control", which intertwines with some other complexities of military command and control. I have no hesitation to say I learned a good deal in getting out the series, on which I continue to work, and really am trying to make obvious.

Back to the image. I have rarely seen so much solid information in one graphic, but, it can also be said that a CT scan of a brain can be full of information. Now, I've been chastised for all caps in code words, but if I was in trouble for this, I hear the boiling oil being brought to the appropriate temperature.

Somehow, I feel as if I should write an article, or some kind of note for the graphic, giving an annotated list of abbreviations, pointing to other articles when possible. I don't know, however, an appropriate place to put such.

What is that I hear? One never expects the Spanish Inquisition?

[Chris Day]

Somehow, I feel as if I should write an article, or some kind of note for the graphic, giving an annotated list of abbreviations, pointing to other articles when possible. I don't know, however, an appropriate place to put such.

One solution is to have the graphic clickable and mousable (is that a word?).  For example, when hovering over the image the acronym could be spelled out in a pop-up.  When clicking on elements in the image this could lead to a related article.  For an example see the template i set up as an academic exercise to see what was possible. 

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Template:Naval_Shore_Establishment

Using this image mapping code it should be possible to make complex flow diagrams that are excellent navigation tools as well as clarifying the elements of the diagram to a non-expert.

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

Somehow, I feel as if I should write an article, or some kind of note for the graphic, giving an annotated list of abbreviations, pointing to other articles when possible. I don't know, however, an appropriate place to put such.

One solution is to have the graphic clickable and mousable (is that a word?).  For example, when hovering over the image the acronym could be spelled out in a pop-up.  When clicking on elements in the image this could lead to a related article.  For an example see the template i set up as an academic exercise to see what was possible. 

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Template:Naval_Shore_Establishment

Using this image mapping code it should be possible to make complex flow diagrams that are excellent navigation tools as well as clarifying the elements of the diagram to a non-expert.

Mousable? In my case, it would have to be trackballable, which might be getting uncomfortably close to violating the family friendliness policy. It might also be stylusable. While the stylus tablet (which I rarely can get to work; a software issue) does have a mouse, there is often a cat on top of the mouse. Mousing under 16-plus pounds of loudly purring cat trying to groom one's beard is a challenge.

Seriously, though, I've always wanted to try to make something "clickable".

Since you tend to have the best insight on naming, r-template information, etc., although I'm still working to grok your overall-view (it seems very good), let me bring up a question that arises from making certain things clickable. You'll see, for example, a number of boxes marked "KG", which, avoiding some esoterica, is a Key Generator, or, in more common language, an encryptor-decryptor approved for classified traffic by the National Security Agency. More often not, that's about all that is needed to be said about a KG. Does that sound like a "definition" that doesn't deserve a cluster, but also shouldn't be deprecated?

Especially in the thick alphabet soup of military and network issues, there are great numbers of abbreviations that merit only a sentence or two of explanation. Even knowing quite a bit about the different KG's, I can look at that diagram and be perfectly happy not to know if it's a KG-13, KG-34, or KG-84. There might be some reason (not too likely) to write articles about those specific KG's, but there are quite a few things, in text and graphics, that really don't need more than a very few sentences of definition and possibly a link. I greatly hesitate to create clusters for those, especially knowing that the definition will essentially repeat the "article".

Is there a way, without breaking the spirit and letter of clusters and r-templates, to have meaningful definition-only "objects"? Yes, I suppose they might need some metadata, such as workgroup and sort order, but they they are always going to be stubs, etc.

[Chris Day]

Is there a way, without breaking the spirit and letter of clusters and r-templates, to have meaningful definition-only "objects"? Yes, I suppose they might need some metadata, such as workgroup and sort order, but they they are always going to be stubs, etc.

They would not need metadata.  See the following category.
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Category:Definition_Only

Obviously we already have many stand alone definitions.  We can also have stand alone related article subpages.  It is possible for both to exist in associate with a redirect. 

So KG-13 can redirect to to our article on Key Generator but and have a more refined definition too.

Therefore:

{{R|KG-13}} will have the refined definition but link to the article Key Generator (currently the link would be in blue bold italics).

{{R|Key Generator|KG-13}} will also use the refined definition but link to the article Key Generator (currently the link would be in blue plain text).

Another example is at http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Microbial_cell_and_population_biology/Related_Articles where {{R|Biofilm}} is seen to act as a redirect to the home article (Microbial cell and population biology) but sports its own unique definition.  This would be similar to using {{R|KG-13}} on the Key Gererator/Related Articles subpage. This is not the best example since we could easily have an article titled Biofilm, but the principle is demonstrated.

Or in a clickable flow chart you could link to the stand alone definition subpage.  Such pages will not be in any specific workgroup (as there would be no metadata), I assume that would not matter too much.