Stable identifiers.
Assign every public edge a stable ID. Identify the entities, relationship type, meaning and edition. Do not silently change what an ID means.
EDITORIAL / 002
Draw lines.
Show proof.
Data provenance and visualization methods for a living, amendable record of computing history.
Traceable evidence.
Include a creator, document title, URL or archive identifier, date when established, and source classification. Distinguish contemporary records, later recollections and secondary analyses.
Qualified conclusions.
Separate what a source states from the editorial inference drawn from it. Avoid treating stylistic resemblance alone as proof of direct influence.
Don't let layout lie.
Explain whether node position, size, color or arrow direction conveys historical meaning. Decorative placement and animation are not measures of importance or certainty.
Disagreements stay visible.
Label conflicting evidence, keep alternative interpretations accessible and publish the reason for any material reclassification. The strongest available counterevidence matters.
Version the record.
Record edition date, affected claim IDs, accepted changes and reasons. Public editorial decisions require a source trail and explicit correction note when consequential.
DATA LIMITATION
Our opening graph is not a complete database.
It contains five entities and five curated relationships. The machine-readable JSON is intended for inspection and future WordPress import. The W3C PROV primer informs our approach to provenance, but our initial schema is not claimed to be an implementation of the full PROV standard.
INSPECT DATASET ↗ · SOURCE REGISTER ↗