# Corrections and versioning policy

Public version 1.0 — 19 September 2026

No Verdict Before Evidence is an evidence-led public intervention. Its claims are intended to be contestable, traceable, and correctable.

## Canonical record

SENCI Group will maintain one stable landing page for the project. That page will identify the current canonical version of each public document, its publication date, version number, authorship statement, evidence index, and correction history. Repositories and third-party publications may distribute copies, but they do not replace the canonical record.

## Version classes

- **Draft:** internal working material; not citable as the authors' settled position.
- **Review candidate:** sent for substantive criticism; not published as final.
- **Release candidate:** frozen enough for final review and production, but not yet public.
- **Public version:** the canonical released text.
- **Superseded version:** preserved for history but replaced by a newer canonical version.
- **Retraction:** withdrawn because the central argument or evidentiary basis cannot be repaired without producing a materially different work.

## Correction classes

- **Silent correction:** never used after public release except to repair a broken internal link without changing destination or meaning.
- **Minor correction:** typography, formatting, or citation presentation that does not alter meaning. Logged by date.
- **Substantive correction:** changes a factual claim, qualification, status, quotation, inference, or recommendation. Logged with the original text, corrected text, reason, and affected versions.
- **Addendum:** new evidence or a later institutional development that does not show the prior text was wrong at publication.
- **Retraction or replacement:** used when the core thesis or method is materially unsound.

## Release-day checks

Immediately before publication, refresh all live-status claims: pending bills, enacted-law pages, Microsoft consultation status, FTC proposal status, DOJ litigation activity, and venue policies. Preserve the retrieved source or record a failed capture. If a claim cannot be verified, narrow or remove it.

## Evidence changes

Archived files are immutable. A changed source receives a new dated capture and hash; it does not overwrite the earlier file. A hash proves byte identity, not source truth. Source claims, authors' inferences, and unresolved uncertainty remain separately labeled.

## Correction intake

The canonical page should provide a dedicated corrections address. A correction report should identify the document, version, passage, alleged error, and supporting source. Reports should be acknowledged, investigated against the record, and resolved publicly when they affect a published claim.

No donor, collaborator, advocacy organization, AI developer, or author receives a private veto over corrections.

## Version history

- **1.0 — 19 September 2026:** First public release of the white paper, op-ed, reader evidence index, authorship statement, archive manifest, and checksum record. The manuscript argument is unchanged from release candidate 0.9; publication-state labels, the canonical project URL, and public-package metadata were updated for release.