The Metadata Project at The Hermeneuticon is a way to introduce interactivity and deeper engagement with the texts hosted by The Hermetic Library at Hermetic.com. The Metadata Project is a collective, community-driven reference that can add value to the documents on the Hermetic.com site. The purpose of the Metadata Project is to offer a way to encourage engagement with the texts offered by that site through sharing metadata, including hermeneutics, cross-indexes, cross-references, annotations and other marginalia.

Eventually, most of the content on this page will be moved to a sub-page, and this will become a portal to the project content. However, right now, this is intended as an introduction and a brief guideline for constructing project entries.

The intention is that the Metadata Project adds semantic connections and enhancements to the materials hosted by The Hermetic Library, including indexing and references, and eventually the project may act as a database for external applications.

In general, there are two components to each metadata entry. The first is the main page and the second is the discussion. The main page is for existing knowledge that can be pointed to in the text itself or via citation. The discussion page can be used for other personal marginalia and further shared engagement with the content. Discussion in more depth than possible or ideal than on a talk page can be conducted over in an appropriate forum on The Hrmtc Underground.

On the main page for each metadata entry, there should be a familiar encyclopedia structure.

• Introduction (a brief lead section that offers a summary of the document)
• Detailed Content (see below for more about this)
• See (See, See Also, See Instead and other intertextual links)
• References (Citations)
• Notes (Footnotes)
• External Links (Links to meaningful external content)
• Portal and other linking templates
• Categories

In general, the only pages within the Metadata namespace should be entries for content contained in the collection of The Hermetic Library at Hermetic.com and other entries beyond these would be contained in the primary Hermeneuticon namespace. This means that most metadata entries will contain many links to existing or wanted pages in the main namespace.

Links internal to The Hermeneuticon or another site within the family, such as The Hermetic Library, are to be preferred whereever possible, including linking to non-existing pages which which can become future entries.

Within the detailed content of each entry is a chance to offer fundamental information for the content from The Hermetic Library about

• who is mentioned (people)
• what things (objects & concepts)
• why (causes)
• where (locations)
• when (times)
• method (methods)
• means (means)
• to whom (audience)
• what for (purpose)
• with what function
• to what effect (impact)
• in what tone (voice)
• which non-verbal components
• opinion
• judgement
• nature
• custom

Some of these basic elements may be simply a compilation of capitalized words and significant phrases, and those can certainly be a start to kickstart a particular page; but, as this project matures, additional and more complex textual analysis and engagement will hopefully develop.