Veritula – Meta
Showing only those parts of the discussion that lead to #2775 and its comments.
See full discussion·See most recent related ideasLog in or sign up to participate in this discussion.
With an account, you can revise, criticize, and comment on ideas.Idea: Veritula Articles
Currently, Veritula is a discussion website. I believe it could one day do what Wikipedia and Grokipedia do, but better.
A step towards that would be enabling users to produce ‘articles’ or something similar.
An ‘Articles’ tab would be distinct from the ‘Discussions’ tab, featuring explanatory documents similar to encyclopedia entries, and perhaps also blogpost-like content.
Articles focus on distilling the good ideas created/discovered in the discussions that occur on Veritula.
‘Articles’ are functionally no different than top-level ideas in a discussion thread.
I think so. If Veritula did implement articles, the first thing I’d want is the ability to criticize them; to submit deeply nested counter-criticisms; and to render a label showing how many pending criticisms an article has, calculated based on criticism chains. Which is just what Veritula has already.
If Veritula did implement articles, the first thing I’d want is the ability to criticize them; to submit deeply nested counter-criticisms; and to render a label showing how many pending criticisms an article has, calculated based on criticism chains.
I agree, and I think here you have inadvertently pointed at a key difference between discussions and articles. In terms of implementation, articles would be a near clone of discussions, except that the articles themselves can be criticised by users, including all the functionality that articles being criticisable may one day come with, like entire articles going dormant if they don’t answer criticisms within a certain period.
A couple of examples: If I wanted to keep and share information on Karl Popper, it would be a lot more intuitive to produce an article on him in encyclopedia style—where I can present information in a hierarchy, rather than creating a discussion and then making each detail about him a top-level idea, which is more chaotic. The same would be true if I wanted to make articles on CR terms—this doesn’t seem very natural to do in a Veritula discussion, but would be very natural in a series of Veritula articles, one for each term.
It also favours this articles idea that implementing it would be fairly straightforward, due to how much could be carried over from the discussions implementation. It makes it low cost to try.
If I wanted to keep and share information on Karl Popper, it would be a lot more intuitive to produce an article on him in encyclopedia style—where I can present information in a hierarchy, rather than creating a discussion and then making each detail about him a top-level idea, which is more chaotic. The same would be true if I wanted to make articles on CR terms—this doesn’t seem very natural to do in a Veritula discussion, but would be very natural in a series of Veritula articles, one for each term.
Just because something feels unintuitive or unnatural to you doesn’t mean it isn’t the right way for it to be done in the grand scheme of things.
If a goal of Veritula is for it to eventually be widely used, it should cater to at least some of what people are used to. The articles and encyclopedia formats are the most standard way for high-level information to be presented in written form, and internet users expect different kinds of content in articles vs discussions.
If I wanted to keep and share information on Karl Popper, it would be a lot more intuitive to produce an article on him in encyclopedia style—where I can present information in a hierarchy, rather than creating a discussion and then making each detail about him a top-level idea, which is more chaotic.
You already don’t have to do divvy it up like that. Nothing is stopping you from creating a discussion called ‘Karl Popper’ and then posting a single, long-form, top-level idea where you present information in a hierarchy.
Since discussions themselves are criticisable, is there anything wrong with just titling a discussion 'Karl Popper' and then putting the equivalent of an encyclopedia article in the about section? That is functionally identical to what an article would be, but I am interested if you would prefer discussions not be used that way.
Note: Discussions with outstanding top-level criticisms do not render a 'criticised' pill like ideas with outstanding criticisms do.
Continuing on from #2882, would it make sense to enable users to criticise the discussion/entry/topic, such that it would render a criticism pill?
… is there anything wrong with just titling a discussion 'Karl Popper' and then putting the equivalent of an encyclopedia article in the about section?
Yes. About sections can’t be part of criticism chains.
… is there anything wrong with just titling a discussion 'Karl Popper' and then putting the equivalent of an encyclopedia article in the about section?
About sections are for context or background info, not content.
I just realised that it is possible to publish a top-level idea as a 'criticism' in a discussion, in the way I have advocated an article would be criticisable. I am struggling to understand what it means to criticise a discussion. @dennis-hackethal may you please explain this?
I am struggling to understand what it means to criticise a discussion.
Top-level criticisms don’t criticize the discussion as a whole. They’re just criticisms of something. Anything. It depends on context.
For example, top-level criticisms in the Veritula – Meta discussion are often bug reports. So they’re criticisms of Veritula.
If ‘discussions’ take on a broader form, like we have discussed up to #2880, would this change? What if a user wishes to express that they take issue with something written in the entry/topic body text? I suppose they would quote it in their top-level criticism.
If ‘discussions’ take on a broader form, like we have discussed up to #2880, would this change?
Maybe. It could depend on which term Veritula adopts.
What if a user wishes to express that they take issue with something written in the entry/topic body text? I suppose they would quote it in their top-level criticism.
Yes.
Maybe about sections should themselves be criticizable… In which case they’re just regular top-level ideas. So maybe I could just remove about sections for future discussions. I’ll mull it over.