How to read covolution.org
Covolution.org is a working wiki!
It contains material at very different stages of development: early brainstorming, ideas under active refinement, and pages that have reached a settled disciplined form.
To make this transparent to readers, every page on the wiki carries a maturity label at the top.
The labels are not value judgments. Brainstorming is where ideas come from, and the wiki preserves the brainstorming alongside the refined material rather than discarding it. The labels exist so readers can tell what they are reading and adjust their expectations accordingly.
The three labels
Brainstorm. The page is at an early exploratory stage. The author has put down ideas to think with, not finished positions. Statements on the page may be hasty, may overreach, may contradict other pages on the wiki, and may use language the disciplined framework has elsewhere disavowed. Brainstorm pages are valuable as records of where ideas come from and as raw material for later refinement. They should not be cited as the framework's settled position, and readers should treat their claims with caution.
Working. The page is under active development. Its content engages the disciplined framework and has been thought through more carefully than brainstorm material, but the formulation is not yet settled. Statements on the page are intended to be defensible but may change as the framework matures. Working pages are appropriate for substantive engagement, with the understanding that revisions are likely.
Stable. The page reflects the disciplined version of the framework. Its content has been tested against alternatives, criticism, and internal coherence with the rest of the wiki. Stable pages are intended to be defensible against serious scrutiny and are suitable for citation. They will still be revised when the framework develops further, but the revisions will be incremental rather than wholesale.
How to use the labels
If you are looking for the framework's considered position on a topic, read the Stable and Working pages.
If you are interested in the framework's intellectual genealogy or want to see where ideas are forming, read the Brainstorm pages. These show the framework in motion rather than at rest.
If you encounter a contradiction between a Brainstorm page and a Stable page, the Stable page reflects the framework's current disciplined position. The Brainstorm page is preserved because the earlier formulation is part of the project's history, not because it is currently endorsed.
If you are a scientific reviewer evaluating the framework, the Stable pages and the disciplined Working pages are the material against which the framework should be assessed. Brainstorm pages are not yet ready for that kind of evaluation and should be read as such.
What the labels do not mean
Brainstorm does not mean wrong. Some brainstorming ideas are correct and become the seeds of stable positions. Others turn out to be hasty and are eventually retired. The label only says that the page has not yet been through the refinement process.
Stable does not mean final. The framework will continue to develop, and pages currently labeled Stable will be revised. Stable means the page reflects the disciplined version of the framework at the present time, not that the page will never change.
The labels are not a strict hierarchy. A page can move from Brainstorm to Working to Stable as it matures, but a page can also move from Stable back to Working if a revision opens a question that was previously thought settled. The labels track the current state of each page, not its destiny.
Why this wiki uses this system
Covolution Theory and biosophy are long-running intellectual projects that combine speculative exploration with careful scientific and philosophical work. The two activities feed each other: brainstorming generates the material that careful work refines, and careful work suggests new directions for brainstorming. Both activities need to be visible.
Most academic publishing collapses these stages into a single output (the finished paper) and hides the brainstorming. Most popular intellectual writing collapses them in the opposite direction (the speculative essay) and hides the careful work. This wiki tries to keep both visible without confusing readers about which is which.
The labels are the operational mechanism for this. They ask the reader to do a small amount of work in understanding what kind of material a given page contains, in exchange for access to a wider range of the project's intellectual life than either pure academic publishing or pure popular writing would provide.
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