Things I like about Citizendium - #2
One of the nice things I like about writing or editing for Citizendium is the availability of ‘subpages’, complementary pages attached to the Main Article. The subpages give you the opportunity to extend the content of the Main Article without unduly interrupting the narrative flow of the article.
See: en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Subpages
A ‘Bibliography’ subpage lets you extend the references to the in-text citations of the Main Article with a list of annotated further reading items—books, articles, etc. Your annotation of a book, say, could take form of a mini book report, or a discussion of how the book relates to the issues discussed in the Main Article.
A ‘Related Articles’ subpage lets you list, and link to, articles in Citizendium that relate to the topic of the Main Article. It integrates the topics of the encyclopedia that widen the scope of the Main Article.
An ‘External Links’ subpage lets you list and link to Webpages related to the topic. You can arrange them by category, and annotate.
A ‘Talk’ subpage is a page for authors and Editors to discuss the contents and composition of the Main Article and its other subpages, including questions, suggestions, and critiques.
Those four subpage types are generated by default when the Main Article is inaugurated and are reached for viewing and editing by clicking on tabs in a horizontal menu bar just under the title of the Main Article.
It should not be difficult to appreciate how those default subpages extend the Main Article’s value without disrupting it narrative flow or rendering it unduly long. But Citizendium does not stop there. It offers the author a wide variety of optional subpage types to employ for special purposes related to the topic of the Main Article.
Guess what the optional subpage ‘Filmography’ would add to the topic of an appropriate Main Article. Or a ‘Timelines’ subpage, or ‘Videos’, or ‘Tutorials’, or ‘Addendum’, or ‘Advanced’.
So, as an author or collaborative group of authors, your Main Article takes the form of what Citizendium calls a “cluster”. The cluster renders the topic multidimensional, and gives the reader a multidimensional learning experience.
Neat!