CZ:Related Articles

This page contains standards and regulations related to Related Articles subpages.

"Related Articles" pages, such as Biology/Related Articles, link to a hand-picked set of other Citizendium articles. These pages list articles under three standard headings: Parent topics, Subtopics, and Other related topics. They also list, or should list, definitions of each linked-to article.

Taken together, "Related Articles" pages will compose a hand-created category scheme. This could be help not only to Citizendium users who are looking for more 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. For a good example of this use, see Civil society/Related Articles.

What links to include

"Be bold" when compiling lists of Related Articles. We have no firm rules.

Heading and format standards

All Related Articles pages have three "default" headings.

• Parent topics
• Subtopics
• Other related topics

These of course can be altered if inapproriate or extended. When there is a group of topics greater than five or so that share some useful classification, a subheading (i.e., a heading that further classifies Subtopics and Other Related Topics) is probably in order. Subheadings should be used liberally--they are very useful information--but chosen carefully and edited aggressively. In particular, topics should be chosen so as not to overlap too much.

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 the next section for usage notes.

The {{r}} template

See also Definitions.

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--Philosophy/Definition.

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. .
• The [e] link takes one to the definition template for the topic in question.

Note: use the singular form of the topic name, i.e., the same as the article title. For example, when constructing the Related Articles page for the "Cat" article, or Cat/Related Articles, you should list "lion" rather than "lions".

Guidelines for editing

How to use the {{r}} template

See also Definitions for our definition policy, and Template:R for technical notes.

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 Topic1/Definition. To write a definition for 'Topic1', simply click on that link, write out a brief definition according to our standards (see Definitions), 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!

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