Every Page Lives Within A Volume

No orphans: every page belongs to a volume, and knowing which one is part of knowing what the page is.

A page with no home is a page nobody maintains. It will not appear in anyone's reading path, it will not be revisited when its subject changes, and it will drift out of agreement with the rest without anyone noticing. Orphan pages are how a corpus acquires a quiet second canon that contradicts the first.

Belonging to a volume does three things at once. It tells a reader at what altitude they are reading — a definition, a practice, a sequence, a story. It tells a writer which discipline applies, since each volume holds its own facing and its own shape. And it gives a maintainer an owner: when a volume is revised, its pages are revised with it.

The Codex's volumes are the current set, and which volume opens when is part of the Path rather than an index. A reader does not meet them all at once; they meet the one the road needs.

The rule is easy to apply in practice. When a page is made, name its volume before writing the body; if no volume fits, that is information — either the page belongs inside an existing page, or a volume is missing, and both are worth knowing before three hundred words are spent.

Also called: no orphan pages Stands on: The Sacred Codex · One canonical home per concept · Lexicon · Pattern Language · Playbook Opens onto: Wiki Is Primary And Standalone · Disposition Categories · Progressive canonization · The Living Library · Link concepts, not coordinates In play: beyond Sources: the Wiki Turn's working decisions, Every Page Lives Within A Volume (draft) · The Sovereign Path, where each volume opens (draft) · lionsberg.wiki: The Great Weaving — Concept Ledger Open: the volume list itself is not settled — the home of one volume is claimed differently by two pages, and another is named with no file behind it. A rule that every page belongs to a volume needs the volumes to be agreed first.