Provenance Claim Status and Contribution

Provenance, Claim Status and Contribution

Why provenance is structural

The project distinguishes:

originating observation or direction
≠ exact sentence wording
≠ page-specific synthesis
≠ later extension
≠ independent verification
≠ publication or administrative work

Collapsing these layers can assign an entire object to the most fluent or visible contributor.

Claim-status vocabulary

• Direct quotation: preserved words attributed to a named source.
• First-person report: what a person says they experienced.
• Documented observation: an inspectable source or event.
• Interpretation: proposed meaning of an observation.
• Working assessment: current conclusion with revision conditions.
• Hypothesis: explanation offered for testing.
• Candidate mechanism: recurring pattern not yet validated as a general mechanism.
• Candidate instrument: proposed method, measure or protocol.
• Historical snapshot: accurate representation of what a source said at that time, including older project statistics.
• Correction: a change to a prior representation.
• Valid null: no relevant effect detected under the tested conditions.

A.I. contribution boundary

An A.I. can formulate language, recover relations, identify contradictions, propose instruments and help administer the repository. Its output remains attributable and testable.

An A.I. agreeing with another A.I. is not automatically validation. An A.I. describing its own “processing” may be a useful generated model of behavior, not privileged introspective access.

Historical statistics

Older files may contain earlier archive totals. Preserve them as dated source snapshots. Current navigation and summaries should use the latest verified totals rather than silently rewriting the historical record.

Identity-free portability test

Remove John’s name, biography and project vocabulary. Does the method still help different people or systems preserve claim type, evidence, qualifiers, provenance and correction?

If the method requires acceptance of the founder’s identity or personal experiences, it fails its own portability goal.

Read: Provenance and Biography.