Workflow - Handling Ripple Effects

How should the scientonomic workflow handle the ripple effect of additional minor changes to the body of scientonomic knowledge caused by the acceptance of a certain modification?

As modifications to the body of scientonomic knowledge are introduced, they often affect not only those elements that are explicitly mentioned in the suggested modification but also other elements. For instance, there appear to be cases where a change in the definition of a certain term may have a ripple effect on other accepted theories which use that concept. Whenever a new theory is accepted it is typically the case that at least small modifications need to be made to some old theories, and to the discussions of them in the encyclopedia, for the sake of consistency and clarity. In an ideal world, the modification that suggests the acceptance of this new theory should identify all instances where old theories and old encyclopedia entries need to be modified for the sake of maintaining consistency. However, since scientonomists are not omniscient, it is sometimes difficult to identify all of the necessary changes to old theories at the moment of the publication of the modification. Thus, some of these required changes surface only after the publication or even after the acceptance of the respective modification (e.g. modification Sciento-2018-0005 and modification Sciento-2018-0008). The question is how such situations are to be handled in the workflow. Specifically, should the editors be granted a permission to make small changes to old theories for the sake of maintaining consistency, without the need for explicit review and acceptance? Or should any such changes go through the regular scientonomic route, i.e. should these minor changes also be presented as new suggested modifications?

In the scientonomic context, this question was first formulated by Paul Patton in 2019. The question is currently accepted as a legitimate topic for discussion by Scientonomy community. At the moment, the question has no accepted answer in Scientonomy.

History

Acceptance Record

Here is the complete acceptance record of this question (it includes all the instances when the question was accepted as a legitimate topic for discussion by a community):

Community	Accepted From	Acceptance Indicators	Still Accepted	Accepted Until	Rejection Indicators
Scientonomy	1 September 2019	The question became accepted as a legitimate topic of scientonomic inquiry as a result of the acceptance of modification Sciento-2018-0008.	Yes

All Theories

The following theories have attempted to answer this question:

Theory	Formulation	Formulated In
Handling Ripple Effects - Editorial House Keeping (Shaw-Barseghyan-2019)	The encyclopedia editors should be granted official housekeeping rights to handle the ripple effects. If the additional required changes are implicit in the suggested modification, the editors should create and alter encyclopedia pages to ensure that the accepted body of scientonomic knowledge is properly documented; if it is conceivable to accept the modification without accepting the ripple effect change in question, the editors should register these changes as new suggested modifications so that the community can discuss and evaluate them in an orderly fashion.	2019

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Accepted Theories

According to our records, no theory on this topic has ever been accepted.

Suggested Modifications

Here is a list of modifications concerning this topic:

Modification	Community	Date Suggested	Summary	Verdict	Verdict Rationale	Date Assessed
Sciento-2019-0006	Scientonomy	22 December 2019	Accept that the encyclopedia editors are to be granted official housekeeping rights to handle the ripple effects. Also accept that if the additional required changes are implicit in the suggested modification, the editors should create and alter encyclopedia pages to ensure that the accepted body of scientonomic knowledge is properly documented; if it is conceivable to accept the modification without accepting the ripple effect change in question, the editors should register these changes as new suggested modifications so that the community can discuss and evaluate them in an orderly fashion.	Open

Current View

There is currently no accepted answer to this question.

Related Topics

This topic is a sub-topic of Scientonomic Workflow.

This topic is also related to the following topic(s):

• The Status of Holism and Ripple Effect