CZ:Related Articles

What are Related Articles pages?

"Related Articles" pages, such as Biology/Related, link to a hand-picked set of other Citizendium articles. These pages list subtopics, parent topics, and other related topics. They also list, or should list, definitions of each linked-to article.

Purpose

Taken together, "Related Articles" pages will compose a hand-created category scheme. This could be of great help not only to Citizendium users who are looking for more general or more specific information, but also to designers of taxonomies and other tools for search and artificial intelligence.

Moreover, with definitions listed with each topic, the list of "related topics" serves double duty as a glossary of related terms.

Heading and format standards

Canonical headings for Related Articles lists

The following is a canonical list of "related articles" headings. Please either use a heading from this list or, f you do not see an appropriate heading, please add to the list.

• Parent topics
• Subtopics
  • Subdisciplines
• Other related topics

How to link to articles

Links should be created using bulleted lists and, where there are more than a dozen entries or so, two columns, created using {{col-begin}}, {{col-break}}, and {{col-end}}.

Links should also be created using the {{r}} template. See "subpage-specific procedures" below for usage notes.

Subpage-specific procedures

The {{r}} template

You could, but should not, write links like this:

* [[Philosophy]]: The study of the meaning and justification of beliefs about the most general, or universal, aspects of things.

Instead, write links using the {{r}} (for "related") template, like this:

{{r|Philosophy}}

This then displays as follows:

• Philosophy [r]: The study of the meaning and justification of beliefs about the most general, or universal, aspects of things. ^[e]

The {{r}} template is a little template that does a lot:

• First, it automatically produces a bullet point.
• Next, it grabs the term's definition from--in the example in question--the {{def philosophy}} template. The reason the definition is grabbed from a separate template is so that the same definition can be conveniently reused and updated from a single predictable location. Don't worry, though: you won't have to remember anything but {{r}}.

Following that, there are two tiny links, [r] and [e]:

• The [r] link takes the user to the Related Articles page of the topic in question. In the example above, while the main link points to Philosophy, the [r] link points to Philosophy/Related. This will be handy for people working on Related Articles subpages systematically; see below.
• The [e] link takes one to the definition template for the topic in question. In the example above, the [e] link points to {{def philosophy}}.

How to use the {{r}} template

Here's how to fill out a list of related articles (with definitions).

The first step is to write out the links as follows (flush left):

...

{{r|Topic1}}

{{r|Topic2}}

{{r|Topic3}}

...

This will initially produce the following (if no definitions exist for the topics in question):

• Topic1 [r]: Add brief definition or description
• Topic2 [r]: Add brief definition or description
• Topic3 [r]: Add brief definition or description

The Topic1 link is to the article titled 'Topic1'. (It will be red if it doesn't exist yet.) Following that is the link to Template:Def Topic1. To write a definition for 'Topic1', simply click on that link, write out a brief definition according to our standards (see above), save, and return to the page (refresh if necessary). Then you'll see the definition you wrote out displayed as in these examples:

• Ecology [r]: The study of the distribution and abundance of organisms and how they are affected by the environment. ^[e]

• Endocrinology [r]: Generically, the study of glands and the hormonal regulation of physiology; also the subspecialty of internal medicine concerned with diseases of the endocrine system ^[e]

• Ethology [r]: The scientific study of animal behavior. ^[e]

Finished!

How to build out the Citizendium's category scheme

The aforementioned [r] links are a handy way to help build out the Citizendium category scheme, which will be made up of "Related Articles" pages containing lists of topics and definitions. While the Citizendium is first and foremost an encyclopedia project, we would certainly like to have a full complement of links connecting our articles, and useful supplementary glossaries. If you are interested in developing our category scheme, please do so. Here's how.

Before we begin, please bear in mind that an article on a topic need not exist in order for us to link to it "in advance," as it were. Also, we can write a definition for the topic without a whole article.

Suppose you want to develop a set of Related Articles pages for the top-level topics in your discipline. Then you would proceed as follows.

First, go to the article about your discipline, the one that has "subtopic" links to all the other articles; e.g., Physics.

Next, if there is no subpage template for the article yet, add one. Type {{subpages}} at the very top of the page. For example, Biology/Related.

Boundaries of included content

Back to Subpage Pilot