Verification
Verification status is about citation integrity, not publication prestige and not claim strength. It answers a narrower question: has JB personally walked the primary-source chain for the SCR references this entry cites?
That is why a verification badge and an evidence tag can never be collapsed into one thing. One measures how strong the claim may be stated. The other measures how much primary-source checking has actually been completed on the citation chain behind the entry.
What This Page Explains
This page explains the PSV system, short for Primary Source Verification, and defines the five verification states used in the wiki.
It is also the destination for the verification badge on public wiki entries. If you click a badge like Verified, this is the methodology page explaining what that badge is claiming and what it is not claiming.
Core Explanation
The five verification states are:
- Verified means every SCR reference cited by the entry has been personally pulled from the primary source and confirmed against the claim being made.
- Pending PSV means one or more cited SCR references are listed, but JB has not yet completed primary-source verification on all of them.
- Partially Verified means some cited references are fully verified while others are still pending or still sitting at the research frontier.
- Unverified means the citation chain broke on inspection. A source was unrecoverable, misattributed, or failed to support the claim as cited.
- RF-Flagged means the relevant evidence is at the research frontier. Cross-species or indirect support may exist, but direct canine primary-source support is still thin or absent.
The important distinction is that four of these states describe work-state on the citation chain, while RF-Flagged describes evidence-state. Pending, Partial, Verified, and Unverified are about what work has or has not been completed on recoverable citations. RF-Flagged means the canine primary source is not yet there to be fully walked in the first place.
That is why RF-Flagged blocks a page from reaching Verified. More citation work cannot solve a frontier-state problem. The only honest way out of RF-Flagged is for the underlying evidence situation to change and for the SCR record to change with it.
There is one nuance worth noticing. Partial does not always mean the same thing operationally. Sometimes it means work is still in progress. Sometimes it means the page includes a frontier-state citation that is honestly acknowledged and cannot yet be promoted. The same badge can therefore cover two different mixed states, which is why readers should look at the entry's evidence apparatus rather than assume Partial always means "almost done."
How to Use This
Use verification status as an auditability signal.
If a page is Verified, you can read that as a claim about source-chain work, not as a promise that every interpretive step on the page is settled science. A heuristic page can still be honestly Verified if the source chain behind its framing claims has been walked cleanly.
If a page is Pending-PSV or Partial, that does not automatically make the page wrong. It means the citation-integrity work is incomplete or mixed. If you are relying on the page for professional or research use, that should slow you down.
If a page is Unverified, the problem is not cosmetic. JB's own rule is that a broken citation chain forces a downgrade in confidence. That is a real warning, not a courtesy note.
See Also
Sources or Governing References
- Internal authority: HWW Section 5.3 for state definitions and transition rules.
- Public companion pages: Evidence Tags and Scientific Claims Register.
- Public observable pattern: verification badges rendered on standard topical wiki entries.