One canonical home per concept

Every concept is articulated in exactly one place; everything else points to it.

Duplication is the way a body of knowledge dies slowly. Two articulations of the same concept begin identical, drift apart under separate editing, and end as two claims that contradict each other with equal authority. A reader who finds both learns that the canon does not know its own mind; a reader who finds only one never discovers that the other exists.

So each concept has one home, and every other reference reaches it by a link. Where a concept currently has many homes, the work is to consolidate into one rather than to maintain a preferred copy. The test is simple to apply: if you are about to restate a definition, you are writing in the wrong place — link instead, and add to the home what your page knew that the home did not.

The rule has a companion that keeps it from destroying anything. Weave, don't delete: the net-new insight in a scattered source is carried into the canonical home before that source is archived, and the source is preserved with its provenance as part of the procession that made the canonical form possible.

The three operational volumes are the standard exception, and they are not really an exception. The same concept appears in all three because each holds a different facing — what it is, how it is done, when to reach for it — and each facing has its one home. Restating the same facing twice is the thing the rule forbids.

Also called: One Source Per Canonical Concept Stands on: Link concepts, not coordinates · Semantic Capture · The LIØNSBERG Book of Conventions Opens onto: Weave, don't delete · Lexicon · Pattern Language · Playbook · Every Page Lives Within A Volume · Progressive canonization · Disposition Categories · The LIØNSBERG Lexicon In play: beyond Sources: The Great Weaving — Concept Ledger, discipline 5 (canon-grade) · the Wiki Turn's working decisions, One Source Per Canonical Concept (draft) · lionsberg.wiki: The Great Weaving — Concept Ledger Open: the canon still holds several concepts at more than one name — two Golden Seed pages at the root beside the seed text, ring beside supercell, two statements of the moves of the Game. The rule is agreed; the consolidation is unfinished.