Talk:Civil society/Related Articles

The "debate" section could either go on a "Debate Guide" subpage, or else on the article itself--not on Civil society/Related. --Larry Sanger 06:45, 2 August 2007 (CDT)

Yes, I see there is a page for that. Hadn't notice it before. This subpage format works exceedingly well!

Roger Lohmann 13:29, 7 August 2007 (CDT)

Thanks, Roger.

See CZ:Definitions for definition format. In short, where you have written:

[[First Great Awakening]] : • The First Great Awakening occurred at a time that might be characterized as "pre-civil society" in the American colonies.

you should write simply:

{{r|First Great Awakening}}

which will display like this:

• First Great Awakening [r]: The First Great Awakening was a religious revitalization movement that swept the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s; there was a de-emphasis on ritual and ceremony and religion became intensely personal. ^[e]

Then follow the Template:Def First Great Awakening link and put your definition there. But notice...the definitions you've provided on this page are all written in the context of the civil society article. They couldn't be reused elsewhere. What we ought to do, instead, is write reusable, general definitions so that we can easily expand new lists, and update all pages that use a definition from a single location. Again, see CZ:Definitions. --Larry Sanger 02:22, 8 August 2007 (CDT)

This is terrific! Thanks very much, Roger! This is pretty much our new "Related Articles" showcase.

I notice you put the checklist on this page. I doubt we'll have checklists for every single subpage; instead, there will be a "master checklist" for entire clusters. --Larry Sanger 23:24, 15 August 2007 (CDT)

Thanks. This latest editing burst was my Wednesday contribution. There are a couple more catalog-type Related Topics to be added. But the subpages format itself has very great potential for encyclopedic presentations.

I wasn't sure about selective checklists, do I dropped it in. Glad to hear that more selectivity would be preferred. Putting them on all subpages would be a real pain!

Roger Lohmann 05:55, 16 August 2007 (CDT)

OK, I've just removed the checklist from this page. --Larry Sanger 06:34, 16 August 2007 (CDT)

Thanks. You beat me to it! -- Roger Lohmann 06:56, 16 August 2007 (CDT)

Parent topics

This is definitely a showcase for Related Articles--thanks, Roger. I do have some nits to pick regarding "Parent topics," however. See CZ:Related Articles, and you'll see that I've added a little text to this section. In short, you've listed a lot of things as "parent topics" of civil society which really aren't parent topics. In fact, I think the only topic listed there which is a bona fide parent topic is community. All parent topics must have civil society as a subtopic. But civil society is not a subtopic of charity, education, philanthropy, etc., according to the definition of "subtopic" given on CZ:Related Articles. The definition given is this:

x is a subtopic of y =df. discussion of x itself is necessarily also discussion of y.

Also consider this "rule of thumb": "As a rule of thumb, if you can imagine the article being a section of the main article, then it's a subtopic." There wouldn't be a section of the articles charity or education, for example, titled "Civil society." --Larry Sanger 09:18, 4 September 2007 (CDT)

Okay. That makes sense. I think I'll leave both community and society however. A long standing theoretical dispute, plus 'civil' is in this case an adjective, qualifier of 'society', which makes it almost automatically fit the definition of subtopic. (Generally, social science topics don't lend themselves well to such logical rigor. So this isn't the last time you'll be having this conversation!)

I think I'll add the removed topics to the related topics list. Any suggestions on how to categorize or organize that list? These are ALL bone fide Related Topics, and full coverage would include articles on every one of them.