Source And Standards Posture¶
The binder separates what a source can support from what a reader might wish it proved. Public explainers can help teach shape, but they do not replace normative standards, proprietary databases, or platform-owned integration data.
Source Roles¶
| Role | What it can support | What it cannot support |
|---|---|---|
| Canonical metadata | Name, scope, standard family, and redistribution boundary. | Full conformance details when the standard is paywalled or not reproduced. |
| Official public specification | Publicly available protocol or format behavior. | Vendor-specific deployments not covered by the public spec. |
| De facto/proprietary format context | Common tool or vendor format behavior. | Universal grammar claims across all tools and versions. |
| Public explainer | Teaching cross-checks, vocabulary, and common diagrams. | Normative authority for edge cases or conformance. |
| Tooling reference | How a public tool models, parses, or displays artifacts. | Proof that every implementation behaves the same way. |
| Synthetic teaching artifact | The exact worked decode on the page. | Operational truth about a real machine. |
| project source policy | Scope, source-quality labels, and research inventory. | Public runtime behavior or a substitute for cited sources. |
Standards Boundaries¶
When a standard is paywalled or redistribution-limited, binder pages may cite public metadata, identify the source role, and describe high-level inspection lessons. They must not copy protected tables, field lists, timing values, or normative text into docs, tests, examples, or samples.
When a public explainer is the available teaching source, the page must keep the claim modest. It can support "this is a common way to explain the shape"; it cannot support "the standard requires this edge-case behavior."
Claim-Level Provenance¶
Final-copy protocol pages should place provenance near the claims it constrains. The useful question is not "is there a source somewhere on the page?" but "does this claim tell the reader what kind of authority it depends on?"
Use the source policy and research basis when promoting a page.
Public Credibility Rules¶
A page is public-reference-ready only when a reader can separate four things at a glance:
- standards metadata or public specification context;
- public explainers used only for teaching cross-checks;
- tooling references used only for implementation/context cross-checks; and
- synthetic artifacts used only for the worked decode on the page.
If that separation is missing, the page should stay draft even when the protocol is important. Importance is not maturity.