Status vocabulary

Documented A primary record directly supports the statement.

Supported Reliable evidence substantially supports it, with stated qualifications.

Circumstantial The evidence is consistent with the claim but does not establish it.

Unresolved Important evidence is missing, conflicting, or unavailable.

Unsupported by cited material The cited source does not establish the claim being made.

Rules

• Preserve a source before arguing about it.
• Identify whether a source is independently obtained or supplied by an interested party.
• Use the narrowest claim the evidence can actually discriminate.
• Do not turn association into guilt or correlation into coordination.
• Separate public-record facts from political rhetoric and anonymous commentary.
• Do not identify private people merely to satisfy curiosity. Identity must be materially relevant to a public-interest question.
• For public spending, follow authorization → obligation → payment → delivery → resident outcome.
• When evidence changes the answer, update the answer.

Corrections

Corrections say what changed, why it changed, and which source resolved the issue. Material corrections are logged rather than silently erased. See the corrections page.