Maps of Content

The index page form — a page whose content is the way into other pages, so that a body of writing can be entered rather than only searched.

A wiki without maps of content is a pile. Search finds what you can already name; a map of content shows what is there, grouped so the shape of the whole is visible, so that a newcomer can find the door and a returning reader can find the room (The Hub · Navigation · The face (a holon's first page) · Orientation and Onboarding Process).

The form is simple and the discipline is in what it refuses. A map of content is only links and the words needed to place them — it does not carry meaning of its own, because meaning on an index page is meaning in the wrong place, and it will drift from the pages it duplicates (One canonical home per concept · Link concepts, not coordinates · The Wiki Reflects the Present).

There is usually more than one, and that is right rather than a failure of tidiness. The same body can be entered by role, by question, by order of reading, or by a personal path through it; the canon carries several at once, including a map of the maps (Room Types · The vocabulary ladder · The Guide's four renderings).

Two things keep them alive. They must be maintained, because an index that has fallen behind is worse than none — it is a confident list of what used to be there (Improvement log · Prune). And they must be honest about coverage, saying what they do not cover rather than implying completeness (Gaps Not Yet Closed · Provenance).

The near neighbour is Mapping and the two are not the same. Mapping, in this canon, is a data practice — the gathering and collating of structured information from which views can be generated. A map of content is a hand-made page of doors.

Also called: MOC · index page · jump page Stands on: Navigation · Language · The LIØNSBERG Book of Conventions Opens onto: The Hub · Mapping · Room Types · The face (a holon's first page) · The Field · Orientation and Onboarding Process · One canonical home per concept · The vocabulary ladder In play: the door — the first page a reader meets, and the page they come back to when lost Sources: Maps of Content (root page, stub — a four-link index naming the maps that exist) · The LIØNSBERG Map of Maps (root page) · lionsberg.wiki: Maps of Content Open: The root page is itself an index of four maps and defines nothing; the form and its disciplines above are a first articulation. · Two of the four maps it names are personal or poetic rather than structural, and nothing says how a reader should choose between them.