How this works
What has to be true before a sentence appears here.
Nothing is written about a person and then sourced afterwards. It runs the other way: an editor records a source, records what that source says, and only then is a profile assembled from those facts. This page is the whole of that rule, and what happens to the things that do not pass it.
- Source behind every fact
- One
- Standings a claim can hold
- Three
- People before it publishes
- Two
The order of work
The source is recorded before the sentence.
A profile is assembled only from facts that were already on the record. Each sentence declares which of them it rests on, and the software refuses to publish a sentence that declares nothing.
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1
Record the source
A page, a register, a journal record, a patent, or a questionnaire the subject filled in, along with the date the editor actually looked at it.
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2
Record what it says
One fact at a time, in the source’s own words as well as in plain words, so a reader can see both what was written and what was understood by it.
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3
Assemble the profile
Sentences are built from those recorded facts and from nothing else. Each one declares the facts it rests on.
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4
Let the software refuse
A sentence that declares no fact does not publish. The rule is enforced by the system, not by an editor remembering it.
Standing
Three standings, and what each one means.
Picking the more flattering of two contradictory sources is how a profile becomes fiction, so the software will not let anyone do it.
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Verified
An editor checked the claim against the primary source itself.
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Reported
A secondary source says so and nobody has gone back to the original. It can be published, and the editor sees a warning while they work.
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Disputed
Two sources disagree. The claim is recorded with a note saying what the disagreement is, and it is never published.
Refusals
What the system will not publish.
These are not editorial preferences. Each one is a rule the software applies before a page can be built, which is why they are stated here as flatly as they are enforced.
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A source with no date
Every source carries the date an editor read it. Nothing can be cited from a source that has no such date, because a claim you cannot go back and check is an assertion wearing a citation as a costume.
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A number that drifted
The most common failure in written biography is not invention, it is drift: a source saying more than forty five years becomes nearly fifty. Every figure in a published sentence has to appear in the source that sentence cites.
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Praise with no source behind it
Prestigious, world renowned, the finest in the field. If a compliment cannot be traced to a source, it is not a fact and it does not appear.
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Congratulation on being listed
Profiles do not congratulate anyone on appearing here. A publisher congratulating a subject on the publisher’s own listing is advertising, not recognition.
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A draft no second person read
Drafting can be assisted, but an assisted draft is checked against the same rules as a typed one, and it is not published until a person who did not write it approves it. Where an image was generated rather than photographed, the page says so beside the image.
Consent
Four permissions, recorded separately.
Publishing a profile, issuing a release in someone’s name, generating a likeness of them, and pointing a public contact form at their address are four separate permissions. One of them does not imply the next.
Each is recorded with the channel it came through and the evidence for it. Consent relayed by a third party is recorded as exactly that, because it is weaker evidence than consent from the person themselves.
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Publishing a profile
Recorded before any page is built.
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Issuing a release
A separate permission from the profile itself.
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Generating a likeness
Disclosed on the image wherever it is used.
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Publishing a contact route
The form reaches the subject, never an operator.
Afterwards
A record that stays open.
A correction is checked against the original source, not against who is asking. If the source was wrong, the entry changes and the profile changes with it. If the source was right, we say so and leave it.
Recognition
Held to the standard above.
Recognition here means a profile prepared exactly this way: sourced, dated, reviewed by a second editor and correctable for as long as it stands.