[EI-4 — Current Content & Publishing Governance Closeout]

EI-4 — Current Content & Publishing Governance Closeout

Status: COMPLETE
Date: 2026-08-08

Purpose

EI-4 moved paco.org from one-time editorial remediation toward durable publishing governance. It normalized current content, established PTIR as a first-class publication, protected public URL contracts, and added automated checks against known regressions.

Completed sprints

EI-4.1 — Current Content Audit — audited current/nonhistorical production content and created the normalization queue.
EI-4.2 — Metadata Normalization — normalized current authored Writing to the EI-3 content model without broad rewrites.
EI-4.3 — PTIR Publication Model — normalized the PTIR production run to series: PTIR and content_type: briefing and removed category-based discovery dependence.
EI-4.4 — URL & Redirect Governance — established public URL/redirect rules and preserved intentional compatibility routes.
EI-4.5 — Editorial Quality Gates — added automated repository checks for taxonomy, PTIR identity, permalink integrity, compatibility routes, and retired Blog pagination.

Closeout correction

Final series validation caught a defect in the initial EI-4.5 controlled vocabulary. The first validator did not exactly match the authoritative EI-3.2 content model. Before EI-4 closure it was corrected to enforce:

Subjects

Technology
Teaching
Computing History
Journalism & Media

Content types

writing
briefing
collection
portfolio

The retired/miscellaneous Personal subject is not allowed. The validator now checks normalized page metadata as well as posts, which protects the Journalism & Media portfolio model.

Governing boundaries retained

EI-1 historical dispositions remain authoritative.
Privacy/DELETE material remains permanently excluded from republication, migration, production media recovery, redirects, and discovery records.
EI-2 media architecture remains authoritative: Google Drive is archival/master storage; GitHub contains only production media required by paco.org.
Explicit permalinks are public contracts unless a deliberate redirect decision supersedes them.
Blog is not a content type or subject.
PTIR is a publication/series, not a subject.
The Loudmouth is a historical collection, not a subject.

Result

EI-4 leaves paco.org with a governed production model rather than a set of cleanup decisions that depend on memory. Current Writing, PTIR, URLs, compatibility routes, and canonical metadata now have explicit rules and automated regression checks.

Next series

EI-5 — Editorial Development & Flagship Content

The next phase should focus on the quality and presentation of retained material rather than additional infrastructure. Its work should include controlled rewriting of EI-1 REWRITE material, flagship selection/promotion, contextual linking, historical framing, and final editorial polish while preserving provenance and privacy boundaries.