Editing Editorial Guidelines (section)

== Editorial Authorship and Revision Control ==
To maintain rigorous academic credit and generate accurate data for the "How to Cite This Article" sections, page authorship is dynamically managed based on text contribution tiers. Individual articles do not follow an anonymous crowd-sourced model. The Managing Editor retains absolute final authority over all page author attribution tracking, placement, and group ordering.

=== Authorship Tiers ===
* '''Main Authors:''' The individual or individuals responsible for creating the initial text or the vast majority of the current page content. If a page has multiple main authors, their names must be listed in strict '''alphabetical order by surname'''.
* '''Other Authors:''' Contributors who have provided significant textual expansion, deep source checking, or substantial structural revisions, but have not overwritten the core baseline argument. These names are appended after the main authors in strict '''alphabetical order by surname'''.

=== Revision and Promotion Thresholds ===
* '''Substantial Expansion:''' Any registered editor who performs a substantial upgrade or expansion to an existing article is entitled to have their name added to the "Other Authors" section.
* '''Major Revision and the "50% Guideline":''' If an editor thoroughly overhauls, expands, or rewrites more than half of the existing article's text, they are traditionally eligible to displace the original creator and be promoted to primary '''Main Author'''.
* '''The Principle of Qualitative Significance:''' The quantitative 50% threshold is strictly a baseline guideline, not an automated rule. If a contributor's revisions fall below the 50% content mark but are deemed highly crucial, foundational, or qualitatively more important than the text left unchanged, the Managing Editor may choose to elevate that contributor to the "Main Authors" tier, or establish them as the sole primary author.

{{See Also|Peer Review and Authorship}}

=== Mandatory Moderation Workflow ===
* '''Prior Forum Discussion:''' Editors are strictly prohibited from executing silent major rewrites or unilaterally altering author lists. Any proposed major rewrite and its subsequent authorship implications must be proposed and discussed within the dedicated **phpBB community forum** beforehand.
* '''Managing Editor Review:''' The Managing Editor must review the thread, evaluate both the quantitative scope and qualitative value of the proposed changes, and explicitly authorize the structural overhaul before any text changes go live on the wiki platform.

=== How to Cite This Article (Universal Template) ===
To provide readers with clean, stable citations for your compiled entries, the final section of every encyclopedic, country profile, and topical page must feature a copyable text box using the standardized template below. 

==== Global Name Ordering Rules ====
* '''First Name Listed:''' The first name in the author sequence must always be inverted with the surname first to facilitate alphabetical indexing (e.g., ''Doe, John'' or ''Chen Boqiang'').
* '''Subsequent Names:''' All following names must be listed in their natural, preferred order (e.g., ''David Smith'' for a Western name, or ''Tanaka Tarō'' for a Japanese author preferring traditional order). 
* '''Implicit Tiers:''' Do not use explicit labels like "(Main Author)" or "(Other Author)" in the visible citation text. The tiering is implicitly understood by the ordering: Main Authors are listed first in alphabetical order, followed immediately by Other Authors in alphabetical order.

==== Citation Structural Template ====

Surname, Given Name [First Main Author], Natural Name [Subsequent Main Authors], & Natural Name [Other Authors] (Year of Last Change). "Title of Wiki Page". ''Radical Buddhism Project''. Version of Exact Date of Last Change (DD Month YYYY). URL.

==== Examples ====
* ''Example A (Single Main Author, No Secondary Contributors):''
** '''Visible Text:''' Smith, John Arthur (2026). "Uchiyama Gudo". ''The Radical Buddhism Project''. Version of 14 May 2026. <nowiki>http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/Uchiyama Gudo</nowiki>.
* ''Example B (Multiple Main Authors + Appended "Other" Authors following an authorized revision):''
** '''Visible Text:''' Chen, David, John Arthur Smith, & Jane Mary Doe (2026). "Taiwan". ''The Radical Buddhism Project''. Version of 13 July 2026. <nowiki>http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/Taiwan</nowiki>.

==== Authorship Change Log ====

Every "How to Cite This Article" section has a hidden authorship change log formatted as follows:
<pre><nowiki><!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG
(page version), (update date). Main: (main authors in order). Other. (other authors in order).
(page version), (update date). Main: (main authors in order). Other. (other authors in order).
... etc.
--></nowiki></pre>

==== Example of a "How to Cite This Article" section ====

<pre><nowiki>== How to Cite This Article ==
<!-- AUTHORSHIP CHANGE LOG
First version, 27 July 2026. Main: Brons, Lajos. Other: (none).-->
Brons, Lajos ({{REVISIONYEAR}}). "Wen Guangxi". ''The Radical Buddhism Project''. Version of {{#time: j F Y | {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY}} }}. <nowiki>http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/Wen_Guangxi</nowiki>.</nowiki></pre>