A living record with a memory
Editorial method
The series is designed to change when better evidence arrives without erasing what earlier readers encountered. Drafts may disappear; published claims may be corrected, superseded, or withdrawn, but they do not silently vanish.
The lifecycle
| State | What readers see | Editorial rule |
|---|---|---|
| Planned | A card on the series map | The question and proposed evidence are visible; no article is implied. |
| Researching | A card marked “In research” | Evidence collection is active; conclusions remain provisional. |
| Draft | Nothing public | Drafts can be reorganized or removed without a public record. |
| Published | A permanent article URL and version number | An immutable snapshot is created at publication. |
| Revised | The latest version plus the complete version history | Material changes require a new numbered snapshot and revision note. |
| Withdrawn | A permanent withdrawal notice and prior-version history | The reason and date remain public; the URL does not become a silent 404. |
Four evidence classes
Firsthand memory is valuable but bounded. A contemporaneous document can establish what an institution announced, not necessarily what happened afterward. Interviews add participant knowledge and must be attributed or explicitly anonymized. Analysis connects the evidence and remains open to challenge. The articles mark these classes because mixing them invisibly would create false certainty.
Version preservation
Every public version receives its own address beneath the article’s permanent URL. A snapshot freezes the article text, its source records, its revision note, and integrity hashes. Article-specific charts and illustrations are stored in versioned asset directories and are not overwritten by later revisions.
Version numbers follow a simple rule:
1.0,2.0, and so on indicate a material change to the thesis, evidence, or interpretation.1.1,1.2, and so on indicate bounded corrections, clarifications, or new supporting evidence that do not reverse the central argument.- Typographical repairs that do not change meaning may be recorded in the correction ledger without changing the major version.
Each current article links to all of its archived versions. Git history supplies another recovery layer, but the public website—not a source-control interface—is the primary historical record for readers.
Feedback and corrections
Every published article provides three routes: a factual correction, an argument challenge, and a private channel for sensitive feedback. A useful submission identifies the exact claim, explains the proposed change, and supplies a source or a path to verification.
Feedback is assigned one of five public dispositions:
- Pending — received but not yet evaluated.
- Accepted — incorporated into a new version.
- Partially accepted — some evidence or reasoning was incorporated, with the boundary explained.
- Declined — considered but not incorporated, with a concise reason when the exchange is public.
- Deferred — credible but dependent on evidence that is not yet available or publishable.
Attribution is opt-in. Private submissions are not published without permission. Public feedback must not contain confidential, proprietary, export-controlled, personally sensitive, or classified information.
Withdrawal rather than disappearance
An article is withdrawn when its central evidentiary basis becomes unreliable, when publication creates an unanticipated safety or privacy problem, or when a material conflict cannot be repaired by ordinary revision. The current URL becomes a dated explanation. Prior versions remain linked unless preserving them would itself sustain the harm that required withdrawal; any exceptional restriction is explained publicly to the greatest safe extent.
The governing rule
Before publication, drafts may disappear. After publication, revisions accumulate and withdrawals leave a record.