Arbital scope

Want to write on Arbital, but are not sure what content to create?

Math

Currently, Arbital is focusing on becoming the best place online to learn math. This means that, for all math topics, we're keen to have:

Summaries - Summaries appear in popovers and are widely seen by readers who want a brief introduction, so improving them or adding them to pages which lack an appropriate one is high-value.
Definition pages - Formal definitions of mathematical concepts. These provide foundations for the rest of our content and allow people familiar with the topic to quickly pick up or refresh an idea. Examples:
Explanation pages - Single page explanations of concepts, with different lenses for people with different backgrounds. These are best suited to mid-sized concepts, and should aim to teach them intuitively.
Full guides - Multi-page flexible guides to topics are Arbital's specialty. If you're confident in your ability to explain a complex topic, considering helping to plan and create these (talking to the community on Slack is usually a good idea, you'll get valuable feedback and assistance on your plans).
External resources lenses - When users are reading about a topic on Arbital, we'd love to also be able to point them to high-quality external resources where they can learn more, or look at things from another angle. Generally, these links should go in an External resources lens, connected to an existing main page (don't create a new standalone page just for links to resources, unless there's already a main page with a good summary explanation of the concept -- we want to make sure users who hover over a greenlink to the page will see a good summary).

If you're familiar with the topics, creating and improving pages which are linked from existing guides, especially [arbital_featured featured] guides, is worth focusing on since more readers will come across them.

[todo: list of possible pages? show/hide?]

Other domains of knowledge

Pages which are not normally classified as math but which are essentially subtopics of math (like much of theoretical computer science) are welcome. We're [arbital_future looking forward] to expanding into physical science, economics, effective altruism, health, e-sports and many other topics once we're confident we have the features and community to support them, but currently, we don't have domains for them.

Drafts and unlisted pages on other topics may still be created if there's something you're itching to write up, but they won't show up in search for anyone other than you and will be clearly marked as not having been approved. So long as it's not illegal, spam, or in violation of Arbital policy (e.g. biography policy) we won't delete it.

Math-adjacent topics

Topics which are adjacent to math but not actually math itself such as the history of mathematical ideas, biographies of mathematicians, and applied math in different domains (e.g. economics) are not currently considered part of the math domain. We look forward to expanding into them, but they, like almost all topics, have more potential for controversy than math itself, so we're holding off for now.

Blogs

We have big plans for making Arbital into an awesome blogging platform with smooth interlinking with our network of knowledge, use of requisites for complex topics, and a ready-made audience for high-quality posts. However, currently, we're not well set up for blogging, so unless for some reason you want to use pre-alpha features it's probably best to blog elsewhere for now.

Comments

Eric Rogstad

Currently, Arbital is focusing on becoming the best place online to learn math\. This means that, for all math topics, we're keen to have:

Are we more believable if we narrow the scope of our ambitions?

Consider, "best place online to find intuitive explanations of mathematical concepts."

Eric Bruylant

More believable, but risks discouraging people from writing the other types of content? I think ambition is good, generally?

Eric Rogstad

Summaries \- Summaries appear in popovers and are widely seen by readers who want a brief introduction, so improving them or adding them to pages which lack an appropriate one is high\-value\. Definition pages \- Formal definitions of mathematical concepts\. These provide foundations for the rest of our content and allow people familiar with the topic to quickly pick up or refresh an idea\. Examples: Explanation pages \- Single page explanations of concepts, with different lenses for people with different backgrounds\. These are best suited to mid\-sized concepts, and should aim to teach them intuitively\. Full guides \- Multi\-page flexible guides to topics are Arbital's specialty\. If you're confident in your ability to explain a complex topic, considering helping to plan and create these \(talking to the community on Slack is usually a good idea, you'll get valuable feedback and assistance on your plans\)\. External resource lenses \- When there's an excellent explanation elsewhere on the web, we'd like people browsing Arbital to be able to find it\. We welcome new lenses, with links to and brief descriptions of high\-quality external resources, for existing Arbital pages \(but not standalone resources pages, we'd like at least a popover\-appropriate summary\)\.

I think this bit is slightly confusing. Is it a new lens per resource?

And what do you mean by standalone resource pages? Am I allowed to create a lens that's just resources, and does it require a summary?

Eric Bruylant

hm, changed it a bit, how's the new version?

Eric Rogstad

Pages which are linked from existing guides are a higher priority\.

Can you expand on what you mean here? They're a higher priority in what sense?

Improving them is a higher priority? Which kind of improvements?

Eric Rogstad

Pages which are not normally classified as math but which are essentially subtopics of math \(like much of theoretical computer science\) are welcome, though not prioritized\. Other topics are not yet accepted, though we're looking forward to expanding in many directions once we're confident we have the features and community to support them\.

I think I'm happy to have TCS concepts on relatively equal footing with other math pages. Are there reasons we shouldn't?

Would questions about TCS not fit in on MathOverflow?

Eric Bruylant

Good point. MathOverflow does have CS stuff. Changed.

Eric Rogstad

Drafts and unlisted pages on other topics may still be created if there's something you're itching to write up, but they won't show up in search for anyone other than you and will be clearly marked as not having been approved\. So long as it's not illegal or spam, we won't delete it\.

Just to make this super concrete, could we give some examples of topics we'd like to include later but don't support now?

Eric Bruylant

I had been thinking of avoiding giving specifics in public, but the new Arbital pages does, so I'll give some examples. I rewrote it to be a bit more positive, thoughts on the new sentence?

Eric Rogstad

Summaries \- Summaries appear in popovers and are widely seen by readers who want a brief introduction, so improving them or adding them to pages which lack an appropriate one is high\-value\. Definition pages \- Formal definitions of mathematical concepts\. These provide foundations for the rest of our content and allow people familiar with the topic to quickly pick up or refresh an idea\. Examples: Explanation pages \- Single page explanations of concepts, with different lenses for people with different backgrounds\. These are best suited to mid\-sized concepts, and should aim to teach them intuitively\. Full guides \- Multi\-page flexible guides to topics are Arbital's specialty\. If you're confident in your ability to explain a complex topic, considering helping to plan and create these \(talking to the community on Slack is usually a good idea, you'll get valuable feedback and assistance on your plans\)\. External resource lenses \- When there's an excellent explanation elsewhere on the web, we'd like people browsing Arbital to be able to find it\. We welcome new lenses, with links to and brief descriptions of high\-quality external resources, for existing Arbital pages \(but not standalone resources pages, we'd like at least a stub page with a popover\-appropriate summary\)\.

The section sounds slightly too passive to me. What would you think of the following re-write?

External resource lenses - When users are reading about a topic on Arbital, we'd love to also be able to point them to high-quality external resources where they can learn more, or look at things from another angle. Generally, these links should go in an External resources lens, connected to an existing main page. (Don't create a new standalone page just for links to resources, unless there's already a main page with a good summary explanation of the concept -- we want to make sure users who hover over a greenlink to the page will see a good summary.)