Fact-Checking Policy
No log entry is public until an independent check returns PASS. The homepage will look unfinished until that happens. That is preferred to looking busy.
Outcomes
| Status | Meaning | Public effect |
|---|---|---|
| PASS | Material claims are supported at the required tier; labels (fact / allegation / analysis / opinion / question) are honest; crime language, if any, is tied to a qualifying record. | Eligible to publish. |
| REVISE | Fixable defects: missing label, overclaim, weak source, unanswered serious allegation. | Returns to the drafter. Not public. |
| HOLD | A necessary record, response window, or corroboration is still outstanding. | Waits. Not public. |
| REJECT | The entry cannot be saved without becoming a different, unsupported story — or it violates standards (including naming a crime the record does not establish). | Does not publish. |
| UNCHECKED | No independent check has been recorded. | Not public. |
PASS is a specific finding, not a mood of enthusiasm. It is the only fact-check status that may appear in a public index, sitemap, RSS item, or JSON Feed item.
Independence
The operator or author who drafted an entry cannot be the checker who issues PASS on that entry. The schema enforces checkerId ∉ drafterIds. A second pair of eyes is not optional because the desk is small; it is required because the desk is small.
High-risk entries need an additional human approval after the check. “Human” means a person accountable for the PASS, not a model completing a rubric.
What the checker reads for
- Every central claim has a kind and a source.
- High-risk claims have primary source plus independent corroboration when available.
- Reddit and other Tier 4 material are not doing structural work.
- The subject was offered a fair chance to respond when the allegation is serious.
- Headlines do not outrun the body.
- No dummy identifiers, invented dockets, or placeholder news.
No autonomous publication
AI may assist research and drafting. It does not merge, PASS, or deploy. There is no ingest bot, including no Reddit ingest, on this launch. CI builds the static site; it does not publish entries. A later process, reviewed separately, may upload already-built files to hosting. That is still not autonomy over the log.