Editorial Guide

Overview

All content on seekersabodepl.com starts as seed — auto-imported from the Phase 1 Knowledge Inventory with minimal quality guarantees. Each entry must be manually reviewed by Prashant before it is marked as reviewed.

This guide explains the workflow.

Status System

Every library entry and thinker profile has a status: field in its YAML frontmatter:

How to Promote an Entry from Seed → Reviewed

1. Open the file

Library entries live at:

content/library/{domain}/{slug}.md

Thinker profiles live at:

content/thinkers/{slug}.md

2. Verify the Reviewer Checklist

Before promoting, confirm each item:

• Citation — Is the citation accurate and complete? Check author name, year, title, journal/publisher. For ancient texts, check that translator and approximate dating (c. BCE/CE) are noted.
• Source link — If the entry is Open Access or Public Domain, does the source link work? Copy it into a browser and verify.
• Summary — Is the summary accurate, original (not plagiarised), and fair? Remember Indian Copyright Act 1957, Section 52 — fair dealing for criticism and review.
• Copyright status — Is the access badge correct? public-domain (author died 60+ years ago), open-access (freely available from publisher), copyrighted (all other cases).
• Pathway assigned — Has at least one pathways: entry been added? Pathways are: "Consciousness for Beginners", "Science-Spirituality Bridge", "Altered States Explorer".

3. Edit the frontmatter

Change:

status: "seed"

To:

status: "reviewed"

4. Rebuild

npm run build

The green checkbox badge will now appear instead of the yellow seed banner.

Editing an Entry

Fields you can edit

Important rules

1. Never republish copyrighted full text — All summaries must be original. Quote sparingly and cite properly.
2. For public domain works (author died 60+ years ago) — You can publish more freely, but original analysis is still expected.
3. For open access works — Link to the original OA source, not a pirate copy.
4. For copyrighted works — Fair dealing for criticism/review only. Keep summaries under 500 words.

Thinker Profiles

Thinker profiles are simpler:

---
title: "Name"
slug: "name"
dates: "Birth–Death (optional)"
domains: ["Primary domain"]
known_for: "Short description"
status: "seed"
---

Body text: biography and contributions.

To edit a profile, modify the file at content/thinkers/{slug}.md and change status to reviewed after verifying the information.

Bulk Operations

Adding a new entry from scratch

1. Create a new .md file in the appropriate content/library/{domain}/ directory
2. Follow the frontmatter template from an existing entry
3. Set status: "seed"
4. Run npm run build to verify no errors

Re-running the migration

If the Phase 1 inventory is updated, re-run:

python3 scripts/migrate_inventory.py

This will regenerate all library and thinker files. ⚠️ This overwrites any manual edits. Always commit your changes before re-running migration.

Citation cleanup

To fix citation quality across entries:

python3 scripts/citation_cleanup.py              # dry run
python3 scripts/citation_cleanup.py --apply      # apply fixes

Copyright Quick Reference

For full details, refer to the Indian Copyright Act 1957, Section 52 (fair dealing).

Need Help?

Open an issue in the repository or contact Prashant directly.