Kinds of thing
Every kind of thing this site describes, and an index of each: concepts, methods, sources, publications and the rest.
Sections say where a page lives. These say what it is. A method, a research note and a case study are different kinds of claim with different obligations attached, and the indexes below list each kind on its own so those obligations are legible.
Only the kinds that have something in them appear here. The vocabulary defines rather more than the site has yet filled in, and listing empty indexes would tell you about the vocabulary rather than about the work.
Three other ways through the same material: publications for what is finished, the timeline for when, and topics for what it is about.
Publications
Finished, dated and reviewed, with an author accountable for the conclusion and a statement of what it does not establish.
| Kind | What it is | Count |
|---|---|---|
| Case studies | A finished account of one piece of work: question, method, result, and what it does not establish. Where a report describes, a case study concludes, which is why it also requires a recommendation and its cost. | 1 |
Working material
Notes, methods and analysis in progress. Useful, and not finished.
| Kind | What it is | Count |
|---|---|---|
| Applications | A method applied to a dataset, with the notebook, model or document that ran it embedded. Reports what was done, not what it means: the finding belongs in an `insight` derived from this, so that evidence and argument stay separable. | 2 |
| Datasets | A specific body of recorded data. What it recorded and what it therefore cannot show are both required, because a dataset's coverage is inseparable from any finding drawn from it. | 1 |
| Insights | What an application actually showed, stated as a finding. The node type that separates evidence from the argument made from it, so a reader can accept one and reject the other. | 1 |
| Institutions | A durable body whose continuity across changes of staff and government is the point: a legislature, a court, a university, a central bank. Kept separate from `organization` because "governed-by" edges usually point here. | 1 |
| Methods | A way of doing something, described so it could be followed. Includes what the method assumes, since that is what determines when it should not be used. | 7 |
| Organizations | A body that acts: a company, nonprofit, coalition or agency. Use `institution` for something whose durability is the point. | 3 |
| People | An individual who can be an author, an actor in an event, or a member of an organization. Create one only when the person needs to be linked to; a name appearing once in a citation does not need a node. | 1 |
| Places | A geographic or administrative area. Both kinds belong here, but say which via `place_kind`: "Chicago" as a city and "Chicago" as a metropolitan statistical area have different boundaries and different data attached to them. | 1 |
| Policies | A stated course of action by a body with authority. Distinct from the `legal-instrument` that enacts it: a policy can exist without legislation, and legislation frequently enacts several policies at once. | 1 |
| Projects | A bounded effort with a question and an end. What groups an enquiry's notes, applications and publications into something with a shape. | 3 |
| Research notes | Working notes on an active line of enquiry. Where a question is being pursued rather than answered. | 4 |