Page Status Labels

A single label cannot say whether a file contains content, whether its writing has been reviewed, whether its scientific claims are settled, or whether its review is fresh. These questions are recorded separately. All authored pages are public, including incomplete outlines; availability does not establish completeness or scientific correctness.

Five independent questions

Question	Governed record	Values or authority
Does the source contain an article?	inventory_status	scaffold, substantive
How mature is the article?	status	stub, draft, usable, reviewed, canonical
What is the character of its main claims?	knowledge_status	settled, standard, active, conjectural, speculative, controversial
Is its review fresh?	review_state	current, due, overdue, blocked
What role does the page play?	topic_type and page_variant	governed base type plus optional specialized shape

These axes can change independently. A draft may explain a settled theorem. A reviewed page may summarize an active research area. A canonical convention page may describe a locally chosen notation rather than a law of nature. None of those combinations is a substitute for examining the page’s assumptions, reasoning, references, and checks.

Source inventory

Source frontmatter has exactly two inventory values.

Scaffold

inventory_status: 'scaffold' reserves a planned route before authoring. A scaffold has an empty body, status: 'stub', and a unique plan identity. It is public, appears in navigation and search, and carries a Planned label in navigation. It omits last_reviewed, review_interval, and knowledge_status because nothing has yet been reviewed.

A scaffold is architecture coverage, not implementation. It cannot own a canonical topic, teach a prerequisite, or count as a finished page.

Substantive

inventory_status: 'substantive' means the body contains real explanatory, reference, computational, historical, or research material. It does not imply that the material is complete, reviewed, or canonical.

scheduled is not a source inventory value. It is a future route state that exists only in the declarative plan manifests. A scheduled route does not need a source file before its activation date.

Editorial maturity

Editorial status has five values.

Stub

A stub is explicitly incomplete. Empty route reservations are scaffolds and therefore stubs. Substantive sources cannot use status: 'stub'; once a body contains real material, it enters draft and becomes subject to the relevant content and review checks.

Draft

A draft contains useful work but has not completed the required review. Its derivation, citations, examples, limitations, links, or presentation may still change materially. draft does not mean known to be wrong; it means review is incomplete.

Usable

A usable page is coherent enough for careful use. Its central result has been checked, its assumptions and limitations are visible, and its links and rendering work. Some role-specific review or polish may remain.

Reviewed

A reviewed page has evidence that its physics, sources, conventions, pedagogy, links, and presentation were checked in proportion to its claims. The last_reviewed date records that completed review, not the most recent file edit. High-risk canonical material also requires an independent reviewer.

Canonical

A canonical page is a reviewed, mature owner of a defined internal scope. Other pages link to it instead of reproducing its derivation or authoritative explanation. Canonical is an ownership responsibility, not a prize awarded to every excellent page.

Review freshness

Review freshness is recorded separately from editorial maturity:

• current: the review is within its governed cadence or a fresh review has just closed;
• due: the review window has arrived and review should be scheduled;
• overdue: the governed review window has passed;
• blocked: review cannot close because named evidence, expertise, tooling, or a dependency is missing.

A reviewed or canonical page can become due without losing its editorial history. The maintainer evaluates the affected claims, corrects errors, and records any unresolved limitations. Do not invent needs_update as an editorial status: use review_state and state what needs attention.

review_interval uses the governed cadence in plans/metadata-policy.json. Defaults include six months for changing frontiers, twelve months for roadmaps and orientation, twenty-four months for reference material, and thirty-six months for stable or conventional material. Named route exceptions may instead be event-driven.

Superseded and historical material

Supersession is also independent of maturity. A route replaced by another owner uses superseded_by to identify the current route. Its remaining content must have a distinct archival, historical, comparison, or migration purpose; duplicate owned derivations are removed. Do not create a deprecated editorial status.

Historical subject matter normally uses a suitable base topic_type, such as experiment, orientation, concept, or reference, plus a descriptive page_variant when needed. Its knowledge character is usually standard or settled depending on the claims. Do not create a historical editorial or knowledge status merely because the page discusses the past.

Knowledge character

knowledge_status describes the page’s principal scientific claims, not the quality of its prose.

Settled

Use settled for results whose validity is not under serious dispute within their stated assumptions: for example, a theorem with explicit hypotheses or an exact solution with a defined domain.

Standard

Use standard for accepted textbook structure, established empirical knowledge, conventional methods, and site conventions. A convention page uses knowledge_status: 'standard' together with topic_type: 'convention'; the choice is locally authoritative without being a fact of nature.

Active

Use active when evidence and interpretation are developing and meaningful updates are expected. State what is established, what is uncertain, and the date through which the literature was reviewed.

Conjectural

Use conjectural for a precise, motivated claim that lacks proof or decisive evidence. Name the conjecture, supporting evidence, and possible falsifiers or counterexamples.

Speculative

Use speculative for a plausible but weakly constrained possibility. Keep it clearly separated from the page’s established results and do not let it carry the central explanatory burden without prominent qualification.

Controversial

Use controversial when qualified experts materially disagree about evidence, method, or interpretation. Describe the competing positions and evidence fairly. Do not use the label merely because a topic is difficult or unfamiliar.

The compatibility mappings in plans/metadata-policy.json translate legacy spellings such as convention, developing, historical, and subtle to a governed knowledge value. New pages use the governed values directly.

Page roles and variants

The governed base topic_type values are:

• orientation;
• concept;
• derivation;
• experiment;
• theorem;
• method;
• model;
• application;
• frontier;
• reference;
• roadmap;
• convention.

A specialized shape belongs in page_variant. A formula card, chapter index, historical experiment, numerical notebook, frontier bridge, or evidence map can therefore retain its useful specific identity without creating a new base type. The central mapping registry normalizes existing legacy spellings; authors must not add new spellings page by page.

Canonical ownership

canonical_home is a current ownership statement. It must resolve to a substantive page. A self-canonical page points to its own route. A non-self-canonical page declares:

• the substantive canonical_home;
• local_role, explaining why this projection exists;
• retained_scope, setting the boundary it may explain locally;
• a visible body link to the owner.

If the intended future owner is still an empty scaffold, a substantive projection uses planned_canonical_home instead and omits canonical_home. This records a future ownership intention, not a current authority. The page must state the missing treatment honestly. Once the owner is substantive, add a visible link and convert the contract to canonical_home after checking the division of scope.

Frontier ownership

Stable domain volumes own established physics, derivations, models, applications, and platform context. Research owns dated evidence, open-problem status, milestone tracking, disputed claims, and annual change records. A stable domain page that points to a living record declares frontier_owner according to plans/frontier-ownership.json.

This division prevents two pages from aging at different rates while claiming to be the same research-status authority. A domain bridge must distinguish established explanations from the dated assessment it references, and identify any missing or incomplete assessment.

Availability and completeness

All authored pages are included in the built site, sidebar, search, and sitemap. This includes empty scaffolds and editorial guidance. There is no separate approval corpus or hidden publication mode. Source completeness and editorial labels continue to describe the work that has actually been done.

A successful build checks that the software can render the site. It does not independently verify a derivation or numerical result. A substantive article still needs clear ownership, suitable prerequisites, correct assumptions, references, and scientific checks proportional to its claims. A numerical lab needs both execution checks and validation of the scientific quantity it reports.

Worked classifications

New explanation of an old theorem. A new spectral-theorem article with unchecked examples is substantive, draft, and settled. Its scientific subject is settled; its page has not completed review.

Fresh frontier review. A carefully checked review of an evolving field can be reviewed, active, and frontier, with review_state: 'current' and a six-month interval. Local statements may still be marked conjectural, speculative, or controversial in the prose.

Site convention owner. A mature Fourier-convention page can be canonical, standard, and convention. It owns the site’s choice, not a unique physical truth.

Old route with a better owner. Preserve an appropriate five-state editorial status, set superseded_by, remove the duplicate derivation, and retain only a distinct migration or historical purpose. After public launch, preserve the stable URL through the governed migration policy.

Review checklist

Before assigning reviewed, confirm that:

1. scope, audience, prerequisites, and ownership are clear;
2. definitions, equations, domains, and assumptions are correct;
3. approximations state validity and failure regimes;
4. evidence labels match claim character;
5. references support consequential claims and changing claims are dated;
6. conventions are consistent or translated explicitly;
7. examples, exercises, and solutions are checked;
8. internal links and canonical contracts agree;
9. figures and math work at desktop and mobile widths;
10. accessibility, navigation, search, and site checks pass;
11. known limitations are visible;
12. last_reviewed, review_interval, and review_state describe the review that actually occurred.

Canonical status adds an ownership audit. Public availability does not replace any of these checks.

Common pitfalls

One label doing several jobs. Do not use editorial status to encode visibility, staleness, supersession, or scientific uncertainty. Choose the field that answers the actual question.

Scaffold as owner. A planned route is not a current authority. Use planned_canonical_home and explain the missing treatment until the owner is substantive.

Build as approval. A successful build does not establish scientific correctness, pedagogical quality, or review freshness.

Arbitrary vocabulary. Do not create a new topic_type or knowledge_status for a local nuance. Use a governed base value and, when needed, a descriptive page_variant.

Exercises

A mature theorem page becomes overdue for review, but no relevant mathematical claim has changed. Which field changes immediately?

Solution

Change review_state from current to overdue. Do not invent a new editorial status. A maintainer must assess the claims and record any limitations or corrections while review is completed.

A compact formula card is substantive, but its intended derivation owner is an empty scaffold. What ownership metadata and explanation are required?

Solution

Use planned_canonical_home, omit canonical_home, retain the compact lookup scope, and explain that the fuller derivation is not yet written. After the derivation owner is substantive, link it visibly and convert the contract to a current canonical_home.

References

• L. E. Ballentine, Quantum Mechanics: A Modern Development, World Scientific, 1998.
• Committee on Publication Ethics, Core Practices, Committee on Publication Ethics, accessed 2026.
• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Reproducibility and Replicability in Science, National Academies Press, 2019.
• A. Peres, Quantum Theory: Concepts and Methods, Kluwer, 1995.