The Clowder Project

1.1.5.2 Why not just use the nLab instead?

There are a number of reasons why Clowder was built as a separate project, instead of e.g. just editing the nLab:

1. 1.

   Curation. All content on Clowder is personally curated by the project maintainer. This ensures an even quality to everything in the project.

2. 2.

   Cohesion. As a consequence of Item 1, the Clowder Project ends up being much more cohesive than the nLab, having a clear and coherent organization, consistent notation and conventions, as well as a consistent style.

3. 3.

   Referenceability. Clowder employs Gerby’s Tag system, meaning that every citable statement in Clowder (e.g. definitions, examples, constructions, propositions, remarks, even individual items in lists, etc.) carries a corresponding tag.

   This makes the project easy to cite and reference, since although the numbering of e.g. a given definition may change, its associated tag will forever be the same. See also Clowder — The Tag System.

4. 4.

   Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding. Clowder is meant to be a crowdfunded project in which the community can help directly finance its development. As a result, the project has a dedicated project maintainer whose role is to continuously take care of the project, coordinating contributions, developing infrastructure, and expanding the content of the project.