Philosophical Research:Items

Items are identifiable concepts distinguishable from other concepts. The scope of what an Item can contain is rather broad, extending to almost anything somebody can hold up a real-world object as an example of — if something can be referenced on a particular page of a book, it has almost certainly met the baseline criteria to be an Item. In the general sense, "items" (wikibase-item) are simply a data-coding tool used to give concepts numbers and link the numbers to each other. In the specific sense, this Wikibase distinguishes between general-category Items, usually representing real-world objects or processes, and a subcategory of items called Signifiers, usually representing images or terms appearing inside works.

Here, Items have a relatively lax notability requirement. Almost anything is considered notable, as long as that thing could conceivably be analyzed in an academic journal article or serves as evidence that it is part of a coherent concept and a more generalized version of it could. If something has enough bibliographic information to be cited, it is notable. Scientific models are notable. Philosophical models are notable. Fictional characters or events are notable. Arbitrary literary motifs and quotes are considered notable, although these last three things belong in the Signifier namespace.

One of the few potential exceptions to what is notable is arbitrary real-world individuals, or published works which amount to arbitrary daily activities of arbitrary individuals. Items should avoid encroaching onto topics that could connect to or perhaps spawn personal "drama" between specific individuals, or which could expose arbitrary individuals to harassment or real-world attacks. The first rule of thumb is that in order to include a work some minimum amount of publication must occur which makes it widely available to anybody even if it is not necessarily available to everybody, and it should be available for approximately a year or two, counting the time it is available and in discussion through online dead-webpage archives. The second general rule of thumb is that all works are subject to death of the author, and authors are non-notable on pure grounds of having created a work, unless something else about them becomes notable, as might be evidenced by a news story, or the need to create an author Item purely to connect related works and fill in localized names or links to biography articles. This Wikibase is, in general, not intended to be a database of detailed information on authors or publishing entities, as such information is already much better handled by Wikidata. However, for citation purposes, some such Items that "shouldn't" be notable can still be created to group other Items, and linked to their Wikidata counterpart.

Occasionally, you may see the rules of notability bent for unpublished work by R.D. or vidak. This is a unique exception granted due to the great amount of time and effort required to create these works and the need to collect great numbers of anecdotal and academic references that are to be connected to small or large portions of them, which was one of the primary reasons for founding this ontology project. This can be considered the "thesis rule": if you have been recognized as working on a long and difficult thesis-length work or theoretical project of comparable scope, you might get permission to term any unpublished article or scrap that at least somewhat supports the work "notable". In either case, "thesis" pages documenting these unpublished works are generally kept under user pages (User:), and considered adjacent to the main content of the wiki.

List of Items

The namespace to hold generic Items is currently under construction.

See User:Reversedragon/FirstNineThousand.