Skip to content

5 min read

Source Template

A reference work the wiki cites — a book, a tool, a website, a video, a podcast, a course, a dataset, a report, or an article. A source page is the bridge between an external work and every wiki page that draws on it: the source gets one canonical entry here, and every page that uses it cites it via the slug in a [source: <slug>] marker.

This is the artefact — for the method (what makes a source good, what tier means, how sourcing works), see SOURCE_TAXONOMY.md and by-tier.

Frontmatter (copy verbatim)

---
title: "<Title of the work>"
slug: <kebab-case-slug>
status: stub
languages: [EN]
categories: [sources]
license: link-only
updated: 2026-MM-DD
type: <book | tool | website | video | podcast | course | dataset | report | article>
author: <one or more names>
year: <YYYY>
language: <ISO 639-1, e.g. en, de, fr, es, it>
url: <canonical URL if online; omit if print-only>
publisher: <if applicable>
isbn: <if book>
license: <copyright | cc-by | cc-by-sa | public-domain | link-only>
tier: <core | background | reference>
target_audience: [<list, e.g. generalist, tactician, strategist, manager, comms, coalition>]
tags: [<list of freeform tags, e.g. nonviolent-action, training>]
---

Field-group comments:

  • Identity (title, slug, status, languages, categories, license, updated): standard wiki frontmatter — see CONVENTIONS.md. Slug is kebab-case and short.
  • Work metadata (type, author, year, language, url, publisher, isbn): what identifies the work in the world. Pick one type from the controlled list. isbn only for books; url only when there is a canonical online version.
  • License (license field here): the work’s license (the rights the author / publisher grants the wiki), distinct from the work’s factual content. link-only is the safe default when in doubt.
  • Wiki classification (tier, target_audience, tags): how this source fits the wiki’s own taxonomy. tier follows SOURCE_TAXONOMY.md: core (cite directly), background (use as context), reference (consult, don’t cite). target_audience is the practitioner role the source is for. tags is freeform but use existing tags where possible (see plans/INDEX.md).

Summary

One paragraph (~5 lines): what the work is, who wrote it, why it matters for organising, what the wiki cites it for. This is what readers see in Wiki/sources/, so write for someone scanning the index.

  • <one paragraph — what it is + why we cite it>

Cover:

  • What kind of work (book / practitioner manual / academic dataset / online archive / training course)
  • Who wrote it (named authors, their institutional home)
  • What claim or method the wiki lifts from it
  • When the wiki uses it (which concept pages cite this source)

Body

1-2 paragraphs: what the body should contain beyond the summary.

The body of a source page is not a review or a recommendation. It is the why-we-cite-it paragraph: when a reader follows the [source: <slug>] marker from a concept page, they arrive here to see what claim the source is the authority for, what its scope is, and where its limitations bite.

Add an in-text citation marker convention reminder — the marker is [source: <slug>]. Pages that use this source must include the marker in body text; the marker is checked by the publish gate against the Wiki/sources/<slug>.md entry (see PUBLISH_GATE). Markers without a matching source page fail the gate.

Include:

  • One paragraph on what specifically the wiki cites this work for (the claim or method the source is the authority on).
  • One paragraph on the source’s scope and limits — what it covers well, what it doesn’t, where its blind spots are (so a reader who lifts a fact from the concept page knows the ceiling).

Keep the body short. The source page is a citation card, not a review.

Where it’s cited

List the wiki pages that already cite this source, each on its own line as a double-bracketed wikilink (the syntax Quartz renders as page-slug) followed by a one-line role description. To find them, run:

grep -r "\[source: <slug>\]" Wiki/

…replacing <slug> with the slug of this source. When a new page is added that cites this source, add the wikilink here too (the publish gate checks this section is up to date).

- wikilink to <page-slug> — *one-line role*
- wikilink to <page-slug> — *one-line role*
- wikilink to <page-slug> — *one-line role*

If the source is newly added and not yet cited, write No wiki pages cite this source yet — add to concept pages as you use the claim, and update this section at the same time.

  • SOURCE_TAXONOMY.md — what tier means, how to score a source
  • by-tier — the hub page grouped by tier
  • by-source-type — sources indexed by type (institutional / legal / media / practitioner / professional / reference / scientific)
  • index — the parent templates index
  • case-study — the case-study template that cites sources the same way
  • PUBLISH_GATE — the publish-gate rule that enforces [source: <slug>] markers