Philosophy - strategy issues

['docmartin' (Dr Martin Cohen)]

Greetings CZ editors and authors!

I'm a new 'convert' to CZ, and I'm very pleased to see all the 'structures' in place here - but a little alarmed at the lack of content! It seems to me that (thinking especailly of the philosophy area) we have to reach a certain level of content before we can hope to attract more editors and authors.

Here's a proposal for doing this.

I have in my own personal notes a range of material suitable to start 'first draft' pages. The references for these will be minimal, usually just to my own books. Let me stress, that is not an attempt at 'spamming' !

The material is for example, from the Hodder 'Essentials of Philosophy and Ethics' which is at about the right level, and is a reliable source, fact checked by other experts prior to publication.

Once the basic page is there, I will hope to see more people coming in and refining, adding 'primary sources' and quotes, etc. - takign out sections that they can do better or disagree with. Whatever.

Here is an example page, or two, that I have done to illustrate what I am proposing to carry on with - if there is general enthusiasm for the strategy.

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Plato

'Plato' incorporates some WP sections and some earlier CZ material.

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Fichte

Fichte is the sort of page that is just completely absent at present from CZ and we urgently need to provide at least basic accounts of. It is 'mono-sourced' as it were...

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel

Hegel is also - at present -  sourced just to my own publications. My aim, as I want to stress, is to provide a good, basic template (stub) in the best spirit of CZ  style and content. This template can then be expanded and modified.

I could attempt to source the material to 'my sources' but it would be very, very time consuming, and in many ways misleading - as the information is arranged a certain way - what way? why in this particular book by M. Cohen etc etc. Anyone citing the 'primary' sources and neglecting to say that would indeed by cheating! But if the information is cited to my book, does it need to be double cited too? There is a trade-off  or balance to be recongisned in sourcing material.

Key idea for discussion here:

My own view is that it is usually helpful to source all orignal quotes back to the primary source, but irritating to readers to source information on 'judgements' about the material, except where the judgement is clearly part of a controversy and 'sides' need to be indicated.

Any feedback, from philosophers and non-philosophers alike, appreciated.

ps.

If people think this is a good strategy, I hope to be able to put up most of the 'key' pages in this area, over the next few months.

[Chris Day]

This is definitely a good strategy.  You're right that there are many holes but we are making progress.  it will be slow as many still find wikipedia a more natural place to work due their extensive coverage.  I think we have advantages though, approval being one and subpages being a second.  Welcome Doc Martin. (Are you really named after an old boot?)

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

Greetings CZ editors and authors!

I'm a new 'convert' to CZ, and I'm very pleased to see all the 'structures' in place here - but a little alarmed at the lack of content! It seems to me that (thinking especailly of the philosophy area) we have to reach a certain level of content before we can hope to attract more editors and authors.

Here's a proposal for doing this.

I have in my own personal notes a range of material suitable to start 'first draft' pages. The references for these will be minimal, usually just to my own books. Let me stress, that is not an attempt at 'spamming' !

The material is for example, from the Hodder 'Essentials of Philosophy and Ethics' which is at about the right level, and is a reliable source, fact checked by other experts prior to publication.

Once the basic page is there, I will hope to see more people coming in and refining, adding 'primary sources' and quotes, etc. - takign out sections that they can do better or disagree with. Whatever.

An additional approach, which we are still feeling out, is using Related Articles subpages to help show the relationships among articles, and also avoid an extension of what WP calls "orphan article".  My view is that it's very hard to grow when articles are isolated. This is not a solved problem, but you can look at the less-than-user friendly  discussion.

['docmartin' (Dr Martin Cohen)]

This is definitely a good strategy.  You're right that there are many holes but we are making progress.  it will be slow as many still find wikipedia a more natural place to work due their extensive coverage.  I think we have advantages though, approval being one and subpages being a second.  Welcome Doc Martin. (Are you really named after an old boot?)

I'm not named after one - I am one!

At least, Chris, you appreciate I share a certain amount of DNA with one...

['docmartin' (Dr Martin Cohen)]

...you can look at the less-than-user friendly  discussion.

Thanks, Howard, friendly or no, some appealing concepts there!
 like
 An Isolated article  which cannot be reached via a series of links from the Main Page
or
 A walled garden
and so on...

But we still have the 'dearth of content' problem to remedy before the 'realtionships' issues arise, no?

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

...you can look at the less-than-user friendly  discussion.

Thanks, Howard, friendly or no, some appealing concepts there!
 like
 An Isolated article  which cannot be reached via a series of links from the Main Page
or
 A walled garden
and so on...

But we still have the 'dearth of content' problem to remedy before the 'realtionships' issues arise, no?

Now, I must be careful in using any philosophical terms around here, lest certain philosophers will dive onto me, headlong flaming from an ethereal sky. (waves cheerily to Larry). Nevertheless, there is -- dare I say an epistemological problem? -- that relates to content. I used to work for the Libraryof Congress, and , if the greatest book on a subject was misplaced in the stacks, its content was likely lost forever.  If one had stack access and found a totally misplaced book, one became something of a Hero of the Day to return it, rather like a baby bird to its nest.

Now, we can make a simplistic comparison of number of articles with the Other Place, but we don't have either an internal or external metric of quality. I contend:

• If an article is isolated/orphaned/whatever, no one will know it's there unless they hit the right search string, so the content may be inacessible.
• If our quality mechanisms depend on review, walled gardens and the like won't be reviewed by subject matter experts, but the articles therein still may be found by search engine -- and an unreviewed article may reflect badly on CZ and not keep people coming back as readers or contributors.

Larry has made the point that only so much direction can be given, in a volunteer structure, as to topics about which to write. Nevertheless, if I were Emperor of CZ, I'd ask for a pledge that once a contributor gets reasonably familiar with the mechanics, being sure articles are linked into a knowledge navigation framework is as essential as hitting "save". When there is no good place to insert material into the framework, either the framework is deficient, or the topic may truly be non-notable.

[Tom Morris]

Martin, thanks for your contributions thus far. I'd love to be contributing more in philosophy, but I'm too busy being ill and reading about metaphysics at the moment. Hopefully over the Christmas break, I'll be able to punch out more articles.

I'll try and pop my nose in and update articles as much as I can. I think we need some light goal-setting in philosophy. I reckon the first thing we need to do is to get the root article - Philosophy - approved. We need to shoot for both breadth and depth. And, of course, we need to recruit more authors and editors. There's a local group that I sometimes attend which gives lectures, seminars and the like on Continental philosophy. Might ask if they could put the word out both to their speakers and those who attend their lectures.

['docmartin' (Dr Martin Cohen)]

...  I reckon the first thing we need to do is to get the root article - Philosophy - approved. We need to shoot for both breadth and depth.

Tom, hope this finds you feeling better and that the Metaphysics isn't contributing to 'other!

Re. the philosophy article, although it is certainly well advanced,  I can't myself see it being easy to finalise. For instance, I think there is a problem even with the opening assertion which states that

Philosophy is an abstract, intellectual discourse–in Greek, [...] philosophia means "love of wisdom"–that has attracted many of the brightest minds throughout history, asking questions about the nature of reality and how human beings should live in that reality, and critically analyzing attempts to answer these questions.

I'd prefer to avoid asserting that is is 'abstract' - as many philosophers think it is a guide to life and decisions with it! Then there's a danger linking it too strongly, even misleadingly to the Greek(s)... philosophy in the 'Ancient' world has little to do with 'Greece' and much to do with North Africa and theorising in the East, carried back by trade. I'm sure the article could easily be rejigged to include or at least 'consider' these kinds of issues, and to repeat, it is a creditable essay already on this much chewed over theme - but my point is that the articel is by its very nature hard to 'finalise' and so, well, maybe we better press on with some of the 'easier' ones!

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

...  I reckon the first thing we need to do is to get the root article - Philosophy - approved. We need to shoot for both breadth and depth.

In a top level article, breadth is more important than depth.
 

Philosophy is an abstract, intellectual discourse–in Greek, [...] philosophia means "love of wisdom"–that has attracted many of the brightest minds throughout history, asking questions about the nature of reality and how human beings should live in that reality, and critically analyzing attempts to answer these questions.

I'd prefer to avoid asserting that is is 'abstract' - as many philosophers think it is a guide to life and decisions with it! Then there's a danger linking it too strongly, even misleadingly to the Greek(s)... philosophy in the 'Ancient' world has little to do with 'Greece' and much to do with North Africa and theorising in the East, carried back by trade. I'm sure the article could easily be rejigged to include or at least 'consider' these kinds of issues, and to repeat, it is a creditable essay already on this much chewed over theme - but my point is that the articel is by its very nature hard to 'finalise' and so, well, maybe we better press on with some of the 'easier' ones.

I didn't read Tom's comment about saying that philosophy was necessarily Greek. I saw it as explaining the etymology of the word "philosophy".

Finalizing or approving an article does not mean that a newer version cannot be created. Of course, an article has to be in reasonably decent form before it can be approved, but there are advantages, especially at the top of a hierarchy, to having a simple approved article. That gives a stable point of reference to which subaritcles can point through direct links and Related Pages.

An approved article immediately becomes the base for a new draft, to which updates can be made.  The refinement of the to-be-approved article is best on the Article talk page, rather than the Forum.

[Larry Sanger]

I have in my own personal notes a range of material suitable to start 'first draft' pages. The references for these will be minimal, usually just to my own books. Let me stress, that is not an attempt at 'spamming' !

This is probably a sound approach, assuming your books are good--which I'd take on trust for now.

Here is an example page, or two, that I have done to illustrate what I am proposing to carry on with - if there is general enthusiasm for the strategy.

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Plato

'Plato' incorporates some WP sections and some earlier CZ material.

Your Plato article seems good to me, but it is somewhat disturbing that you entirely replaced the old article without comment (on the talk page), which basically discarded the work of a half-dozen Citizens before you.  Having looked at the old article, I think yours is clearly better.  The old one sounded pretty amateurish (I'm sorry that I had never noticed it before) and you were justified in mostly replacing it.  All I would ask is that you acknowledge what you had done on the talk page.

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel

Hegel is also - at present -  sourced just to my own publications. My aim, as I want to stress, is to provide a good, basic template (stub) in the best spirit of CZ  style and content. This template can then be expanded and modified.

If that's the quality of your work, and as far as I can tell it looks very good, you don't need to defend the notion of letting CZ use it!

I could attempt to source the material to 'my sources' but it would be very, very time consuming, and in many ways misleading - as the information is arranged a certain way - what way? why in this particular book by M. Cohen etc etc. Anyone citing the 'primary' sources and neglecting to say that would indeed by cheating! But if the information is cited to my book, does it need to be double cited too? There is a trade-off  or balance to be recongisned in sourcing material.

Double citation and citing your work is neither necessary nor even preferable.  What you could do, if you do borrow a really significant part of the article from your work, is to cite your work at the bottom of the article in an italicized notice.  ("A large part of an earlier version of this article was taken from...and donated to the Citizendium by the author.")  We should footnote things only that would need footnoting in an original interpretive work; see this bit for more.

My own view is that it is usually helpful to source all orignal quotes back to the primary source, but irritating to readers to source information on 'judgements' about the material, except where the judgement is clearly part of a controversy and 'sides' need to be indicated.

Sounds right as far as it goes.

If people think this is a good strategy, I hope to be able to put up most of the 'key' pages in this area, over the next few months.

Sounds great!

[Larry Sanger]

An additional approach, which we are still feeling out, is using Related Articles subpages to help show the relationships among articles, and also avoid an extension of what WP calls "orphan article".  My view is that it's very hard to grow when articles are isolated. This is not a solved problem, but you can look at the less-than-user friendly  discussion.

I agree with Howard here.  Simply filling out the Related Articles subpage would be a good idea, if you have time and energy for it.  But to achieve the same aim of interlinking articles properly, copious but not silly/senseless wikilinks are officially recommended.

[Larry Sanger]

Philosophy is an abstract, intellectual discourse–in Greek, [...] philosophia means "love of wisdom"–that has attracted many of the brightest minds throughout history, asking questions about the nature of reality and how human beings should live in that reality, and critically analyzing attempts to answer these questions.

I'd prefer to avoid asserting that is is 'abstract' - as many philosophers think it is a guide to life and decisions with it!

"Abstract" just means "general or widely applicable."  "Be good" is abstract, but given some understanding of what it means, it is a guide to life and decisions.  So I don't see the tension that you do.  Anyway, there's no point in debating this--the point is that most philosophers when introducing the subject say such things as that it is abstract or general or universal, and we would be remiss not pointing that out in some form.

Then there's a danger linking it too strongly, even misleadingly to the Greek(s)... philosophy in the 'Ancient' world has little to do with 'Greece' and much to do with North Africa and theorising in the East, carried back by trade. I'm sure the article could easily be rejigged to include or at least 'consider' these kinds of issues, and to repeat, it is a creditable essay already on this much chewed over theme - but my point is that the articel is by its very nature hard to 'finalise' and so, well, maybe we better press on with some of the 'easier' ones!

I do agree that the article at present gives short shrift to Eastern philosophy.  But, sorry, I find it bizarre to say that philosophy in the ancient world has little to do with Greece.  I say that because, for the large bulk of our readers, ancient philosophy just means ancient Greek (and Hellenistic and Roman) philosophy.  It would be like saying that Empiricist philosophy has nothing to do with the British Isles, when Locke, Berkeley, and Hume are primarily who we mean when we say "the Empiricists."  The fact that there was philosophy going on in China and other places around the same time doesn't mean that that is what is primarily meant by "ancient philosophy" among English-speaking philosophers...as surely you must know...which is why I'm puzzled.

The implication above and in the text you put in the article is that ancient Greek philosophy was "carried back" from the East "by trade."  I'm not sure how to react to this.  Maybe I've just misunderstood, but it sounds like you're saying that, somehow, Greek philosophy is wholly or mostly or even very importantly derivative of Eastern philosophy.  I am not a specialist in ancient philosophy, but I've studied it some, and basically I've never heard of this.  I mean, of course basic introductions to the Presocratics will say things like mathematics and science were developed to a certain extent in Persia and Egypt, and the Presocratics might have been familiar with all this, blah blah blah.  But the details aren't what concern me.  What concerns me is the general conclusion--again, maybe I'm just misunderstanding this and blowing it out of proportion--that Greek philosophy is importantly derivative of Eastern (meaning Chinese?) philosophy.  That's the sort of thing that, if generally accepted, I (and probably anybody who had studied much Greek philosophy) would know about.  But since I don't, I have to conclude that this is a theory of somebody's.  It should be presented as such, maybe--although I might want to doubt that, depending on the details--in the "philosophy" article.  It might better be placed in the "Greek philosophy" article (we don't have such an article yet, by the way).

I'm all for adding a section about Eastern philosophy, and explaining the differences in approach between the traditions.  I don't much like the idea of trying to tie it more closely with Western philosophy than the evidence will bear, and more than appears in the general understanding of these matters shared by philosophers specializing in ancient philosophy.

['docmartin' (Dr Martin Cohen)]

Your Plato article seems good to me, but it is somewhat disturbing that you entirely replaced the old article without comment (on the talk page), which basically discarded the work of a half-dozen Citizens before you. 

Uh, I hope not! I reinserted most of the text, I think, later as a 'box' under a sub-heading of 'Political ambitions'.

Double citation and citing your work is neither necessary nor even preferable.  What you could do, if you do borrow a really significant part of the article from your work, is to cite your work at the bottom of the article in an italicized notice.  ("A large part of an earlier version of this article was taken from...and donated to the Citizendium by the author.")  We should footnote things only that would need footnoting in an original interpretive work; see this bit for more.

Roger!Will do that. (Once donated it is Public Domain?)

Good, and thanks again Larry and others for feedback/ advice and actual edits. I'll try to follow the advice and hope to get some of the 'gaps' in the philosophy pages filled, presumably provisionally, but very 'decently'. CZ has standards!

[Joe Quick]

You do at least need to follow the style guidelines that we have established for Citizendium.  I noticed that you have undone all of my adjustments to the article on Comte that were intended to bring it more in line with those guidelines.  At the very least, please leave the subpages template; it places the article into the correct categories and allows for easier navigation within an article's subpages.

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

You do at least need to follow the style guidelines that we have established for Citizendium.  I noticed that you have undone all of my adjustments to the article on Comte that were intended to bring it more in line with those guidelines.  At the very least, please leave the subpages template; it places the article into the correct categories and allows for easier navigation within an article's subpages.

While they aren't at the level of formal guidelines, do take a look at the navigation ideas and techniques at CZ Talk: Usability.