Directly supported by an authoritative primary record.
Methodology · version 1.0
Show the work. Keep the limits visible.
Out ORU narrows claims to what the record supports, places citations beside the assertion they support, and treats uncertainty as information—not a flaw to hide.
Evidence vocabulary
Five states, each readable without color.
Status describes what kind of support exists. Confidence describes how strongly the available material supports the exact wording. Neither replaces the underlying source.
Adequate when the source and attribution remain explicit.
Asserted in testimony, litigation, or reporting; not adjudicated as fact.
One or more material elements, contexts, or source links remain unresolved.
Not publishable in its present form.
Sourcing hierarchy
Closest to the event first.
- 01Original record
Policy, law, court record, filing, recording, dataset, or contemporaneous document.
- 02First-person testimony
Used with documented provenance, exact consent, fact-checking, and attribution.
- 03Independent reporting
Attributed and linked, with the underlying record sought whenever possible.
- 04Advocacy research
Used with methods and organizational perspective visible.
- 05Lead or recollection
A research direction, not stand-alone support for a high-risk claim.
Claims
Bounded wording
Every material claim receives a stable ID, exact wording, category, status, confidence, source and locator, context, limitations or counterevidence, ORU response status, rights state, and last verification date.
A complaint can establish what was alleged. It cannot, by itself, establish that the allegation was a judicial finding. A court opinion can establish its own holdings and procedure; it does not necessarily resolve every institution-level account.
Testimony
Consent is versioned
Research access, permission to contact, permission to retain private material, and permission to publish are separate. Anonymous, pseudonymous, and named publication are separate choices. Quotes, biographical context, images, audio, video, promotion, and syndication require their own approval.
The public site models only approved public fields. Private identity, contact, consent evidence, withdrawal codes, interviews, and editorial notes belong in a separately authorized system outside Git and the public deployment.
Law and Title IX
Four concepts stay separate
Out ORU distinguishes Title IX’s general rule, the statute’s conflict-specific religious exemption, the regulation’s written-statement process, and complaint-specific enforcement. An OCR assurance letter is not a blanket adjudication of all conduct.
Legal pages state their verification date and are editorial research, not legal advice. Law, guidance, and dockets require launch-day refresh.
Timeline
Chronology without equivalence
Events are dated to the precision supported by their sources and carry a visible type, evidence status, caveat, response state, and source locator. A policy change, attributed account, allegation, court holding, and funding record can share a sequence without being treated as the same kind of proof.
Open-ended or ongoing periods are labeled rather than given invented end dates. The chronology carries a research cutoff and must be refreshed before launch.
Public money
No sensational arithmetic
Loans, grants, expenditures, balances, awards, tax status, and organization-wide revenue are distinct measures. Every figure keeps its program, period, amount type, recipient, source, calculation note, overlap group, and verification date.
Out ORU will not add incomparable measures into a headline total. Displayed totals include formulas and downloadable rows so another reader can reproduce them.
Media
Context travels with the clip
Published media requires the original source, publisher, speaker, event, date, full duration, excerpt timecodes, preceding and following context, human-reviewed transcript, rights status, accessible captions, and ORU response.
Scripture quotation, speaker interpretation, audience instruction, and editorial analysis receive separate labels. If the original is unavailable, the site shows a recovery record rather than recreating certainty.
Corrections
Substantive changes leave a trace
Changes to wording, status, attribution, money, timecode, quotation, or source receive a new verification date and a visible note. Corrections propagate to datasets, captions, metadata, structured data, and share surfaces.
Submit a correction or response →