[EI-5.5 — Featured Corpus Calibration]

EI-5.5 — Featured Corpus Calibration

Status: COMPLETE
Date: 2026-08-08

Objective

Calibrate Featured as a deliberately scarce editorial promotion state so the surface represents paco.org as it exists now rather than simply preserving the strongest items from the historical migration queue.

The governing principle remains: Preserve what is worth remembering. Curate everything else.

Editorial criteria

Featured items should do more than deserve preservation. They should be strong entry points into the site’s present identity and collectively represent its major editorial concerns.

Promotion is based on:

strength as a standalone piece;
usefulness as an introduction to paco.org;
representation of a durable subject in the current content model;
distinctiveness within the Featured set;
enough substance to justify homepage-level prominence.

importance is an editorial prominence control among Featured items, not a rating of historical worth. Square-bracket indicators remain the display convention where importance is shown.

Calibration decisions

Promote: Show your work, even when it hurts

Subject: Teaching
Featured: true
Importance: 5

This is the strongest current Teaching essay and addresses a central professional concern: what learning, expertise, process, and judgment mean when AI can cheaply produce finished-looking work. Promoting it corrects a major imbalance in which the Featured corpus represented computing history and technology but not teaching.

Retain: The Age of Marvels

Subject: Computing History
Featured: true
Importance: 5

This remains a flagship historical essay and a strong entry point into the site’s computing-history material.

Retain: A programmer, again

Subject: Technology
Featured: true
Importance: 5

This remains a strong bridge between personal computing history, programming, and professional technology work.

Retain: Twenty-thirteen

Subject: Computing History
Featured: true
Importance: 4

This complements A programmer, again by showing the earlier curiosity and investigation that preceded later programming work.

Retain: Why IT support is hated

Subject: Technology
Featured: true
Importance: 4

This remains a useful technology-practice piece with enough argument and narrative substance to justify promotion.

Demote: The Intercom

Featured: false
Importance: 2

The piece remains valuable and well connected through History and contextual links, but it is intentionally compact. EI-5.3 already concluded that expanding it would be unnecessary. It does not need Featured status to remain discoverable.

Demote: Journalism & Media Portfolio

Featured: false
Importance: 3

The portfolio remains important professional history, but it is a curated portfolio surface rather than authored writing. It is better reached through the site’s professional/history pathways than mixed into the Featured writing corpus.

Explicit non-promotions

Random videos from the 1980s

Remains featured: false. EI-5.3 correctly characterized it as a compact historical media note rather than a flagship essay.

Narcopapa (2005)

Remains featured: false. It is a useful preservation record for an obsolete Flash-era artifact, but not a primary introduction to the site.

50 Best Websites / Useful websites worth bookmarking

Remain featured: false. Both are useful current Technology pieces, but their list/resource format is more appropriate to recent Writing and subject discovery than the scarce flagship layer.

Presentation changes

/featured/ continues to be metadata-driven and sorted by importance descending.
The page now displays the square-bracket importance indicator and explains that it controls editorial prominence rather than historical value.
The homepage Featured section now uses the same importance-sorted collection before selecting its first four items. It no longer depends on ordinary reverse-chronological site.posts order for Featured placement.

Calibrated Featured corpus

The authored Featured corpus is now:

[5] Show your work, even when it hurts — Teaching
[5] The Age of Marvels — Computing History
[5] A programmer, again — Technology
[4] Twenty-thirteen — Computing History
[4] Why IT support is hated — Technology

This is intentionally small. It gives Teaching explicit representation while retaining the strongest historical and technology pieces.

Constraints preserved

No historical publication dates or permalinks were changed.
No article prose was rewritten during calibration.
No DELETE/privacy material was restored, referenced, or used as a Featured source.
PTIR remains a separate publication and is not eligible for this authored-writing Featured set.
The Loudmouth remains a historical collection and is not eligible for this authored-writing Featured set.

Result

EI-5.5 is complete. Featured now functions as an editorial front door rather than an accumulation of retained material.

Next sprint: EI-5.6 — Editorial Presentation & Final Phase V Validation.