Inclusion criteria for full timeline in timelines
In many cases, the subject matter of a timeline is extremely vast. This means that in principle, the "full timeline" part of the timeline on the subject could grow arbitrarily. In such cases, it is helpful to have (implicit or explicit) inclusion criteria for rows in the full timeline. As the timeline grows over time (as more stuff happens, or more historical source information is uncovered) it may also be worth revisiting these inclusion criteria.
While inclusion criteria are specific to each timeline, there are a few general principles affecting their selection, and a few kinds of inclusion criteria that are recommended.
Contents
Purposes of inclusion criteria
Note that the purposes discussed here are not all conceptually distinct -- they overlap quite a bit, but represent different angles of thinking about the problem.
Communicating through meta-structure
Clear inclusion criteria make a timeline more legible by (implicitly or explicitly) communicating "meta" information about what kinds of things we want to focus on. For instance, if there's an inclusion criterion that says that all launches of new organizations will be covered, but incremental updates to existing organizations won't, that communicates the purpose of the timeline as a timeline of how new organizations enter, versus a timeline of the evolution of individual organizations. On the other hand, consider an inclusion criterion that says that major events for organizations above a certain size will be covered, but organizations below a size will not be covered. This communicates a structure that focuses on the big players in the space as the main ones to watch.
Reducing clutter
Sometimes, a bunch of events are easy to generate but can clutter the timeline. Examples include: entry/exit of employees at the organization that is the subject of the timeline, grants made by a foundation that is the subject of the timeline, blog posts by or about an individual that is the subject of the timeline.
Moreover, the extent to which these create clutter can depend on the specific topic. For instance, for some foundations that rarely make grants, each grant might be an important window into what's going on. For organizations that make hundreds of grants, adding information about each grant can clutter the timeline and make it harder to find meaningful stuff.
Deduplicating against better ways of communicating specific information
In some cases, there are external tools and websites that are much better at capturing and presenting certain kinds of information, and it's better to use those. For instance, for employee entries and exits, it may be better to use a tool such as Org Watch, that is designed to explore precisely that.
In some cases, it does make sense to put the information in the timeline, but as a separate table outside of the full timeline. For instance, the Bitcoin Core version history was initially part of the full timeline at timeline of Bitcoin, but we moved it to its own table. That table has two advantages: it can be much more compact (it can strip verbiage that would be needed when putting the same information in the full timeline) and it declutters the full timeline.
Keeping the raw size in check
It is generally recommended that the full timeline not grow beyond 300-500 rows, with 300 being a level at which it makes sense to start thinking of no longer working on the timeline, and 500 being a soft upper bound on the rows. This limit is based on what humans are capable of processing as well as on the sizes of pages that browsers and the MediaWiki editing software can conveniently handle.
Easier hand-off between editors
For timelines that pass hands between multiple editors over time, having clear inclusion criteria allows for more consistency and uniformity of edits over time.
Example timelines with inclusion criteria
Kinds of inclusion criteria
Inclusion criteria for "who" or "what"
One kind of inclusion criterion is for who or what gets included. For instance, for the timeline of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as of August 30, a minimum of $50 million was set as the inclusion criterion for individual grants in the full timeline.
Inclusion criteria for "when"
There are a few different aspects of "when".
The first is the overall time period covered by the timeline. In general, unless otherwise specified, our timelines are scoped to cover the entire history of the topic, as well as possibly some pre-history. However, there may be cases where, in principle, the history of a topic stretches far back, but cogent, explicit information related to the topic only spans a few years. We may choose to focus the timeline on those few years.
Another aspect of the "when" is the stage in the lifecycle of the subtopic the specific row is about. For instance, this "when" would distinguish between the starting of an organization and incremental changes to it. We may set an inclusion criterion that is more inclusive of the starts of organizations but less inclusive of incremental changes at organizations.
Differences between these inclusion criteria and inclusion criteria for other lists
These differences are relevant because they inform our research process.
Differences between the events we select for organization timelines and how they describe their own histories
There are a few ways our timeline of an organization may differ from the way they describe their own history; specifics may vary by timeline, based on what we want to get out of each timeline.
- Our timeline of an organization often include a lot more on "firsts" for things that are not grand enough for the organization to describe in their own timeline. For instance, the start dates for website registration, blog, mailing list, etc. These are important behind-the-scenes milestones that the organization may not put in its public-facing history.
- Related to the above, our timeline of an organization may include references to the first time they mentioned a particular topic, even if this was well before they published officially on the topic or had any association that they would care to put in their organizational history. For instance, the timeline of GiveWell has timeline rows for some of GiveWell's early blog posts where they started identifying relevant organizations as well as started honing key ideas that would inform their thinking in coming years.
- Related to the above points, our timelines tend to be more heavily informed by the content of discussion on blogs and mailing lists than the official histories.
- Our timelines may include more information about backdrop events, such as competitors or others in the ecosystem, than the organization's official history does.
