Help:Index/Metadata/Metadata

This is a Citizendium help page

This help page is meant for help and guidance only. It can be edited by any Citizen and, whilst we try to ensure it is accurate, it may not fully represent current policy.

Further guidance can be found at the Metadata page.

There is one subpage which is not like the others; it's called the metadata, and it contains material which is not displayed to users, but rather used internally to Citizendium, to contain information about the article (hence its name). In addition to containing information which Citizendium uses to tie together all the subpages with the main article page, it also tracks things like the article's quality, which workgroups are responsible for it, etc. Information which it contains is also used to automatically add the article to a number of relevant categories.

Metadata contents

Here is a list of the fields in the metadata:

{{#switch: {{{info}}}

<!--general article properties-->
|       pagename = 
|        variant = 

<!--Required for checklist-->

|            abc =  
|      cat_check = 
|         status = currently no status
|    underlinked = 
|        cleanup = 
|             by = 
|           cat1 = 
|           cat2 = 
|           cat3 = 
|           sub1 = 
|           sub2 = 
|           sub3 = 
|           tab1 = 
|           tab2 = 
|           tab3 = 

<!--required for ToApprove template-->
|    article url = 
|    subpage url = 
|        cluster = 
|            now = 
|     ToA editor = 
|    ToA editor2 = 
|    ToA editor3 = 
|           date = 

<!--required for Approved template-->
|       A editor = 
|      A editor2 = 
|      A editor3 = 

}}<noinclude>{{subpages}}</noinclude>

In brief:

• pagename: must contain the correct name of the article.
• variant: records the dialect of English which the article is written in.

• abc: means the form of the title for alphabetization, e.g. "Doherty, John" or "Orient, The". Please think this one through.
• cat_check: put "yes" if you want someone to check over the categories.
• status: 0 for approved articles; 1 developed, 2 developing, 3 stub, 4 external
• underlinked: put "yes" if not enough other articles link to it (click "What links here" at left)
• cleanup: put "yes" if basic cleanup has been done.
• by: obsolete; leave blank.
• cat1, cat2 and cat3: workgroups; fill in numerical order.
• sub1, sub2 and sub3: sub-workgroups; fill in numerical order.
• tab1, tab2 and tab3: per-article subpages; fill in numerical order.

• article url: a URL link to the version to approve.
• subpage url: a URL link to the version of a subpage to approve.
• cluster: blank unless the whole cluster needs to be approved.
• now: the date and time when the nomination was made.
• ToA editor, ToA editor2, ToA editor3: name of the editor(s) who nominated the article for approval; fill in numerical order.
• date: deadline for comments (format yyyymmdd).

• A editor, A editor2, A editor3: copied from ToA editor etc when Approval is completed.

A detailed explanation for each of the field is available here.

Metadata implementation

The current instantiation (briefly) is that the metdata is a MediaWiki template (i.e. a piece of MediaWiki markup which is transcluded (i.e. copied over) into every page which uses the template). Any page which needs access to any information which is kept in the metadata simply transcludes the template which holds the metadata. The metadata is kept (because it's a template) in the Template: namespace (which is where all templates normally live); specifically, for article "Foo", the metadata is at "Template:Foo/Metadata".

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