Editorial discipline and sourcing

Overview

Editorial discipline at Candid Creative is the operational layer that makes the knowledge base, the public site, and client deliverables defensible under scrutiny. It is built from converging professional-journalism standards (BBC, Reuters, SPJ), an institutional confidence taxonomy (US Intelligence Community), a working internet-scale example (Wikipedia), legal substantiation doctrine (FTC), and link-rot empirics (Zittrain 2014, NYT 2021). The page consolidates the seven-label confidence taxonomy, the eight-pattern citation library, the "what to source" decision matrix, the nine-step link-rot mitigation plan, the four-magnitude retraction/correction playbook, the operational rules that govern every Candid public artifact, and a catalogue of statistics Candid will not quote because primary evidence does not support them.

The discipline is summarised by a single test: if a skeptical reader asks "where did that come from?" and the writer cannot answer in one sentence with a name and a date, the claim needs sourcing. Every objective claim in Candid client deliverables, KB entries, and Candid's own public writing carries a named source, a publication or retrieval date, a verbatim quote of twenty-five words or fewer where possible, and a confidence label drawn from the seven-label taxonomy. This is the operational expression of Wikipedia's verifiability-not-truth policy for business writing, and it is also the practical defence against AI-amplified misinformation in 2026.

See Research brief: Confidence Levels, Sources, and Dated Claims — why every statement on a credible site should be verifiable (piece 15 of 15) for the original research-discipline framing this page extends. See Wikipedia verifiability policy: all challenged material must carry an inline citation to a reliable published source for the broader policy framing in brief 3.

Seven-label confidence taxonomy (Candid 2026)

The canonical Candid Creative confidence-label taxonomy. Every existing KB entry uses an informal version of this; the taxonomy below is the formal source-of-truth going forward.

Label	Definition	Example
Verified	Primary source quoted directly; URL + date + verbatim quote ≤25 words; re-checked within 6 months.	"BBC requires sourcing 'as appropriate to subject and nature' (BBC §3.2.2, 2019 ed.; verified May 2026)."
Industry-consensus	Multiple independent reputable sources concur; no authoritative contradiction.	"Core Web Vitals influence ranking. (Google Search Central + multiple 2024-2025 industry studies.)"
Single-source	One credible source, not yet corroborated.	"Wikipedia is 7.8% of ChatGPT citations. (Profound, 680M citations Aug 2024-Jun 2025.)"
Estimated	Author's calculation/synthesis from data; not a direct citation.	"AI Overviews appeared in 88.1% of informational queries at initial measurement; share has since shifted (Semrush, 2025)."
Author's view	Opinion, recommendation, or interpretation.	"We recommend KB-backed sites over brochure builds. (Author's view.)"
Contested	Reputable sources disagree.	"Whether E-E-A-T is a direct ranking factor is contested. (Google: no. Some SEOs: yes.)"
Stale / under review	Was Verified/Industry-consensus, source >18 months old, awaiting re-check.	"Link-rot rate in legal citations was ~50% after a decade (Zittrain 2014 — methodology likely still valid)."

Lineage

The three-tier base (High / Moderate / Low confidence) is drawn from the US Intelligence Community (see the IC section below and [[ic-confidence-taxonomy-high-moderate-low]]). The seven-label Candid adaptation extends that base with four additional labels needed for business writing that the IC framework does not need:

• Estimated — bridges the gap between Industry-consensus and Single-source when the writer is doing arithmetic on cited inputs.
• Author's view — makes opinions visibly opinions, not stealth-sourced claims.
• Contested — explicitly distinguishes "honest disagreement among credible sources" from "no good source."
• Stale — the time-decay label that turns the KB into a living document.

How to apply

The labels are used inline at the research stage (Stage 1 of the research-first workflow). In derived public articles, the labels are smoothed into prose ("according to verified sources" / "industry estimates suggest") but the underlying KB entry preserves the explicit label. Marketing pages link back to the article; a reader pursuing one click sees the labeled source.

The seven-label discipline is the operational expression of [[wikipedia-verifiability-not-truth-policy-foundational]] for business writing.

Citation pattern library (eight patterns, 2026)

The Candid citation pattern library. The pattern is chosen to match the artifact, not the writer's preference.

Pattern	When to use	Tradeoff
Inline link in running prose	Default for 1-2 citations per paragraph	Lowest friction; risk of "link to a blog repeating the claim" = not sourcing
Inline parenthetical with source + date	KB articles, research briefs (Candid default)	Heaviest signal of rigor; slightly heavier prose
Hover footnotes (Wikipedia Reference Tooltips style, sidenotes.css)	Long-form analytical content	Excellent on desktop; requires keyboard/screen-reader accessibility; needs tap-to-expand on mobile
Numbered footnotes with backlinks	Academic-style depth, 15+ citations	Familiar; requires scrolling. Tufte-style margin sidenotes preserve eye-line
End-of-section "Sources" block	Topical clusters of citations	Cleaner prose; pairs well with claim numbering
Dedicated "Sources & Methodology" page	Marketing pages making research-derived claims	Marketing page breathes; research page carries rigor — marketing page MUST link to source page
Schema.org structured data (Article.citation, ClaimReview, Claim)	Machine readers / AI engines	Invisible to humans, high AI-citation value. ClaimReview no longer surfaces as Google rich result (June 2025) but remains useful for non-Google ingestion ([[google-retired-claim-review-rich-results-june-2025]])
Archive-link pairs ("Original | Archived [date]")	Time-sensitive web citations	Extra link cost; immunizes against link rot ([[nyt-link-half-life-15-years-13pct-content-drift]])

Candid Creative defaults by artifact:

• Inline parenthetical with source + date in research briefs and KB articles.
• Hover footnotes or end-of-section "Sources" blocks in long-form public articles.
• Dedicated Sources page for marketing pages derived from KB research.
• Always include archive links for time-sensitive citations.

What-to-source checklist

The Candid "what needs sourcing" decision matrix.

Must source

• Statistics, percentages, dollar amounts, dates, counts.
• Direct or paraphrased quotes from named people or organizations.
• Attributions to "studies" / "research" / "experts" — these are FTC triggers (see the FTC section below and [[ftc-reasonable-basis-doctrine-1984]]).
• Claims about competitors, vendors, regulators, platforms.
• Historical events, regulatory rules, technical specs, industry standards.
• Performance claims ("X% faster" — FTC-actionable).
• Contested or non-obvious claims.
• Anything that, if wrong, damages a person, a company, or the reader.

Should source

• Industry-consensus statements with specific numbers.
• Best-practice recommendations from named experts.
• Definitions where multiple definitions exist.

Doesn't require sourcing

• Common knowledge ("Kitchener-Waterloo is in Ontario").
• Clearly labeled author opinions (Author's view label from the seven-label taxonomy).
• Clearly framed first-hand experience.
• Generic descriptions of Candid's own services (subject to FTC truthfulness / substantiation if comparative).
• Things the reader can verify by looking at the page.

The test

If a skeptical reader asks "where did that come from?" and the writer cannot answer in one sentence with a name and a date, it needs sourcing.

Link rot empirics

NYT 15-year half-life, 13% content drift

A 2021 study of New York Times external links from 1996-2019 found a ~15-year half-life of working links, with 13% of "live" links no longer pointing to original content (content drift, not just 404s). The source is the Wikipedia synthesis citing the 2021 NYT-link study at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_rot. Confidence: Industry-consensus.

Zittrain 2014 (companion)

Zittrain et al. (Harvard Law Review 2014) — see Zittrain et al. (Harvard Law 2014): 50% of URLs in U.S. Supreme Court opinions suffer reference rot — found that 50% of US Supreme Court opinion links and 70% of Harvard Law Review links were no longer functional. The older study reports larger numbers in the same direction.

Empirical assumption for sourcing

Any web citation has a meaningful probability of breaking within 5 years. The defense is not "don't cite the web" — it is capture + quote. See the nine-step plan immediately below.

Link-rot mitigation: 9-step plan

1. Capture an archive snapshot at citation time — archive.org Save Page Now, Perma.cc. Store the archive URL alongside the original.
2. Prefer persistent identifiers: DOIs, ISBNs, government document numbers, regulatory filing IDs.
3. Cite the most stable host: Wikipedia (revision permalink), .gov, .edu, established publishers.
4. Quote the source verbatim, don't just link. A ≤25-word direct quote in the citation means the claim survives link death and can be searched in archives. Highest-leverage practice.
5. Quarterly automated link-checker on the KB.
6. Quarterly manual spot-check of high-importance citations.
7. Own-domain mirror (PDF) of critical external sources where copyright/fair-use permits.
8. Date every citation ("as of May 2026" / "retrieved May 2026").
9. Update dateModified in structured data when sources are re-verified or replaced.

Self-published research outputs

Get a DOI (free via Zenodo) for any Candid-authored research artifact (white papers, downloadable reports, methodology documents). The DOI persists even if the original URL changes.

Why verbatim quote is the highest-leverage step

When a URL dies, a footnote like "Source: example.com/article-123" leaves no recovery path. A footnote like "Per BBC §3.2.2: 'All BBC output...must be well sourced, based on sound evidence, thoroughly tested.' (BBC Editorial Guidelines, 2019 ed.)" is searchable in any archive even if the URL is gone. The verbatim quote is the durability layer; the URL is the convenience layer.

Professional-journalism converging standards

Three independent professional-journalism standards converge on the same point: name your sources, prefer named to anonymous, attribute the uncorroborated.

BBC Editorial Guidelines §3.2.2 — sound evidence

"All BBC output, as appropriate to its subject and nature, must be well sourced, based on sound evidence, thoroughly tested and presented in clear, precise language."

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidelines/accuracy (2019 edition). Confidence: Verified.

Companion §3.3.4 (single-source reluctance):

"We should be reluctant to rely on a single source. If we do rely on a single source, it should be credible, and a named, on-the-record source is always preferable."

Companion §3.2.3 (attribution required when uncorroborated):

"Claims, allegations, material facts and other content that cannot be corroborated should normally be attributed."

The BBC §3 cluster is the cleanest single editorial-standards source. Three rules, all transferable to marketing content: sound evidence basis; prefer named on-the-record sources to single anonymous sources; attribute the uncorroborated.

SPJ Code of Ethics (2014) — identify sources clearly

"Identify sources clearly. The public is entitled to as much information as possible to judge the reliability and motivations of sources."

Source: https://spj.org/spj-code-of-ethics. Confidence: Verified.

Companion: the Washington Post / two-source norm (December 2017): "There must be two sources with the same firsthand knowledge" before publication of contested claims. Industry-consensus in working newsrooms.

The "reliability and motivations" framing matters more than the citation mechanic. Readers need to evaluate not just what was said but who said it and why they might say it. A named source with credentials, affiliation, and date does all three. An anonymous source does none.

Reuters Handbook — anonymous sources are the weakest

"Accuracy entails honesty in sourcing. Our reputation... rests on the credibility of our sources."

"A named source is always preferable to an unnamed source... Anonymous sources are the weakest sources."

Source: https://handbook.reuters.com (last comprehensively revised 2012; principles remain in force at Reuters). Confidence: Verified.

Caveat on dating: the Reuters Handbook is older than the default 2023 freshness threshold. Justification for inclusion: it is the primary editorial-standards document for Reuters and remains authoritative; no successor document has replaced it.

Reuters Trust Principles (adopted 1941, reaffirmed at Thomson-Reuters merger April 2008):

"That the integrity, independence and freedom from bias of Thomson Reuters shall at all times be fully preserved... That Thomson Reuters shall at no time pass into the hands of any one interest, group or faction."

The operational application: "Anonymous sources are the weakest" is the test to apply to every "experts say" or "studies show" in marketing copy. Marketing content routinely uses anonymous sources where journalism explicitly refuses to. The fix is named sources, dated, with verbatim quote.

Wikipedia: verifiability not truth

"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth — whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source."

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability. Confidence: Verified.

Four claim types that always need inline citations (per WP:V)

1. Direct quotations.
2. Contentious material about living persons.
3. Anything challenged or likely to be challenged.
4. Statistics.

Why "verifiability not truth" is the right model for business writing: the writer does not have to be omniscient — only honest about where claims come from. Wikipedia is the largest-scale working example of "every claim → reliable source" at internet scale. See Wikipedia verifiability policy: all challenged material must carry an inline citation to a reliable published source for the earlier framing.

Institutional confidence taxonomy (US IC)

The US Intelligence Community uses a three-tier confidence taxonomy codified in Intelligence Community Directives 203 and 206, used in National Intelligence Estimates since at least the 2007 NIE Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities:

• High confidence: high-quality information, solid judgment.
• Moderate confidence: "credibly sourced and plausible but not of sufficient quality or corroborated sufficiently to warrant a higher level of confidence."
• Low confidence: credibility uncertain, source information scant or fragmented.

Source: NPR summarizing the 2007 NIE convention; Harvard Belfer Center analysis; ICD 203/206. Confidence: Verified (institutional documentation, long-standing practice).

Tetlock companion

Tetlock's superforecasters (Good Judgment Project) demonstrate empirically that calibrated probability statements with frequent small updates beat categorical assertions. The 10 commandments for aspiring superforecasters (Tetlock & Gardner, Superforecasting, 2015) translate directly into editorial practice: focus on questions where evidence pays off, distinguish probability from confidence, update incrementally.

CIS adaptation

The Center for Internet Security adopts the same logic for cyber threat intelligence. "Moderate Confidence generally means that the information is credibly sourced and interpreted to be plausible but is not of sufficient quality or corroboration..." The three-tier base is the source pattern for the seven-label Candid taxonomy above.

Epistemic-status labels lower the publishing threshold

Devon Zuegel's framing:

"[Epistemic status labels are] a hack in order to publish half-baked ideas that I'd otherwise not feel comfortable sharing."

Source: Devon Zuegel personal essays on epistemic status practice. Confidence: Verified.

Confidence labeling is a publishing-threshold lowerer, not an academic affectation. Without labels, a writer faces a binary: publish at full conviction or do not publish. With labels, partial findings, in-progress thinking, and contested claims can all ship — with the reader appropriately calibrated.

Chris Krycho framing (companion): "a nice little tool to signify that kind of humility." The same impulse, less hack-ier framing.

FTC reasonable-basis doctrine (1984)

The FTC's Policy Statement on Advertising Substantiation (1984, building on a 1971 line of decisions) requires that advertisers possess "the amount and type of substantiation the ad actually communicates to consumers" for any objective ad claim. Section 5 of the FTC Act remains the enforcement basis.

Source: https://ftc.gov Substantiation Statement; FTC training materials. Confidence: Verified.

Specific phrases that trigger heightened substantiation thresholds

"Tests Prove... Doctors Recommend... Studies Show..."

Source: FTC training materials — https://ftc.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/training-materials/substantiation.pdf.

The operational implication: the phrase "studies show" in marketing copy without a specific named study is not just a sourcing failure — it is potentially FTC-actionable. The reader's instinct that "studies show" is a tell of unsourced claims aligns with FTC enforcement reality.

Status in 2026

Xlear v. FTC litigation (filed late 2024, citing Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 2024) is challenging the doctrine. Absent injunction, the doctrine remains in full force as of May 2026. Monitor for outcome.

Canadian portability

FTC enforcement is US-only, but the substantiation principle applies via comparable Canadian rules (Competition Bureau's "general impression test" under the Competition Act, plus CRTC and provincial consumer-protection statutes). The discipline is portable; the legal mechanism differs.

Google retired ClaimReview rich results (June 2025)

Per Poynter (June 2025):

"Google decided to retire ClaimReview, a program little known outside the fact-checking world that highlighted fact checks from reputable news sources."

Source: Poynter (IFCN), June 2025 — https://poynter.org/ifcn/2025. Confidence: Verified.

Important nuance: the schema itself remains an open standard at schema.org and is still being used by fact-checkers "to provide cues to new chatbots and other AI applications" (Bill Adair, Duke Reporters' Lab).

The operational read for Candid: do not overinvest in ClaimReview / FactCheck specifically for Google rich-result visibility — that signal is gone. But do implement broader sourcing schema (Article.citation, dateModified, Author/Person with credentials) for AI engines that index more openly. The Schema.org Article foundation remains a high-value signal.

LLMs hallucinate with high certainty (Simhi et al., Feb 2025)

Quote (Simhi, Itzhak, Barez, Stanovsky, Belinkov, arXiv:2502.12964, February 2025):

"Models can hallucinate with high certainty even when they have the correct knowledge."

Source: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.12964. Confidence: Single-source (peer-reviewed preprint); the broader finding (LLMs produce confidently wrong output) is Industry-consensus across the hallucination literature.

Companion: Vectara 2025-2026 hallucination leaderboard shows top models at 0.7-10%+ hallucination on summarization tasks, with rates over 50% on fact recall about specific people.

Correction to circulating attribution

Many SEO and marketing blogs cite "MIT research, January 2025" for a "LLMs are 34% more confident when wrong" finding. The closest verifiable primary source is Simhi et al. (Technion/Oxford/Hebrew University), arXiv:2502.12964, February 2025. The "34% / MIT / January 2025" institutional attribution is Single-source / Contested; the core finding (LLMs hallucinate with high certainty) is Industry-consensus.

Why this matters for Candid sourcing

Citation discipline is the only practical defense against AI-amplified misinformation. When a writer cites a verbatim source with URL + date + archive, the reader can verify; when an AI writes "studies show" without citation, the reader cannot. The asymmetry is the operational case for the seven-label taxonomy.

Retraction and correction playbook

Adapted from COPE's August 2025 guidelines + Trust Project + AP standards. The playbook divides the response surface into four magnitudes.

Magnitude	Response	Visible?
Typo, broken link, formatting	Silent edit	No
Substantive (fact wrong, conclusion stands)	Inline dated correction note	Yes
Material (conclusion changes)	Top-of-page notice + dated changelog	Yes, above the fold
Fundamentally wrong	Retraction notice replaces body; original archived & linked	Yes; original URL serves the retraction

Templates

Correction template:

Correction (DATE): An earlier version stated [WRONG CLAIM]. The accurate statement is [CORRECT CLAIM], sourced from [NAMED SOURCE, URL, DATE]. We thank [READER] for flagging this.

Retraction template:

Retraction (DATE): This article has been retracted because [REASON]. The original text is preserved at [ARCHIVE LINK] for transparency. We regret the error and have updated our editorial process to [SPECIFIC CHANGE].

Surface the correction

• Add to a public Corrections log (linked from the footer).
• Update dateModified in structured data.
• Notify any syndicators of the wrong claim.

Then learn

A correction without a process change is theater. Every material correction must trace to a specific update in the editorial process — a new check, a new source-verification step, a new automated guard.

COPE framing (Aug 2025)

"The purpose of retraction is to correct the literature and ensure its integrity, not to punish the authors."

Source: https://publicationethics.org. Confidence: Verified.

A correction without a process change is theater. A retraction stigmatized as failure produces under-disclosure. The COPE framing — corrections exist to fix the record, not punish — is the right disposition to import into Candid editorial process. The four-magnitude retraction discipline (typo / substantive / material / fundamentally wrong) explicitly adopts the COPE framing.

Stats Candid will not quote (2026 catalogue)

The following statistics are commonly cited in marketing and SEO blogs but are not supported by primary evidence at 2026, or are misapplied beyond their original scope. Candid will not quote them in sales conversations or marketing copy.

1. "A 1-second delay reduces conversions by 7% across all sites." Traces to Akamai/SOASTA 2017 retail data. Defensible as a retail e-commerce benchmark from 2017, not a universal law. For a KW lawyer or HVAC contractor, this specific elasticity has not been demonstrated.

2. "Amazon loses 1% revenue per 100ms of latency." Reportedly Amazon internal research circa 2006 (Greg Linden). No public methodology, approximately twenty years old, Amazon-scale operations.

3. "Core Web Vitals doubled in ranking importance" / "Google made CWV twice as important." Cited by some marketing blogs but not in any Google primary statement. Google has consistently described CWV as one of many page-experience signals, tiebreaker class.

4. "53% of mobile users abandon in 3 seconds" applied to 2026 baselines. Original study (Google/DoubleClick/SOASTA, 2016) is nearly a decade old. Networks, devices and tolerance baselines have shifted. Quote it as historical context, not a current 2026 number.

5. "Faster site = better AI Overview citation rate." No defensible primary research supports this as of May 2026. The one direct analysis found the opposite of what an SEO marketer would assume.

6. Agency "case studies" claiming "redesign → +40% conversions" as performance wins. A redesign confounds content, layout, CTA copy, navigation, trust signals, and performance. Lift cannot be attributed to speed without an isolated A/B test. Reject these.

7. Conversion-rate elasticity for "professional services" specifically. No major isolated study (Deloitte, Akamai, web.dev cases, Portent, Contentsquare) breaks out elasticity for lawyers, accountants, dentists or consultants in a defensible way. Extrapolate cautiously from Deloitte lead-gen and Portent B2B — but flag as "general B2B," not "professional services-specific."

Candid Creative's sales conversations are won on credibility. A quoted stat that does not survive scrutiny loses the room. See Research brief: Confidence Levels, Sources, and Dated Claims — why every statement on a credible site should be verifiable (piece 15 of 15) for the broader sourcing discipline.

Operational rules

The discipline above is enforced by four operational rules that govern every Candid public artifact.

Rule 1 — Every objective claim carries a named source + date + verbatim quote + confidence label

Every objective claim in Candid Creative client deliverables, KB entries, and Candid's own public writing carries:

1. A named source (person + institution where applicable).
2. A publication or retrieval date.
3. A verbatim quote ≤25 words where possible (the link-rot survival layer).
4. A confidence label from the seven-label taxonomy.

Why: reader trust default in 2026 is distrust (Edelman 2025 Trust Barometer — 7 in 10 believe leaders mislead). BBC §3.2.2, the Reuters Handbook and the SPJ Code all converge on named-source-preferred. Wikipedia's "verifiability not truth" model is the largest working example. FTC reasonable-basis doctrine makes unsourced objective claims legally actionable. AI engines preferentially cite content with structured citations, named sources and explicit dates. The verbatim quote is the highest-leverage link-rot defense.

How to apply: use the what-to-source checklist as the decision matrix for what needs sourcing. Use the citation pattern library for the format (Candid default: inline parenthetical for research / KB, hover footnotes for long-form, dedicated source page for marketing). The test: if a skeptical reader asks "where did that come from?" and the writer cannot answer in one sentence with a name and a date, the claim needs sourcing. For LLM-assisted drafting: every claim the LLM produces must be traced to a named source before it ships — the Simhi et al. finding is the reason.

Rule 2 — Cite with a named source and URL, confidence flagged honestly

Every quantitative claim, every quoted statement, and every attributed framing in Candid content carries a citation with: named author or institution, publication date, and verifiable URL. Each claim also carries an explicit confidence flag — Verified (primary source quoted), Industry-consensus (multiple independent corroborating sources), or Single-source (one source only — note).

This operationalizes Wikipedia's verifiability policy for the agency context (see Wikipedia verifiability policy: all challenged material must carry an inline citation to a reliable published source). The same discipline that makes Wikipedia the #1 cited domain in Google AI Mode makes Candid content extractable, defensible and citable. It also catches errors before publication — the act of finding the URL for a citation is the act of catching the citation that does not exist.

How to apply: every claim node in this KB carries a Source line and a Confidence line. Public-facing articles use inline markdown links with the citation immediately next to the claim. "Studies show…" without a citation is banned in Candid copy. Either find the study or drop the claim. Re-using a vendor stat? Disclose the methodology and the original publication date.

Rule 3 — Capture an archive snapshot at citation time

At the moment of citing any web source in Candid content, capture an archive snapshot (Perma.cc preferred; archive.org Save Page Now as fallback). Include both URLs in the citation. Quote the source verbatim (≤25 words) so the claim survives link death.

Why: NYT link half-life is ~15 years with 13% content drift even on "live" links. Zittrain (Harvard Law 2014): 50% of US Supreme Court opinion links, 70% of Harvard Law Review links broken. A footnote with "source: example.com/article-123" leaves no recovery path when the URL dies; a footnote with a verbatim quote remains searchable in archives forever.

How to apply: the workflow is cite → snapshot (one click in Perma.cc browser extension) → verbatim quote into the citation. Format: "...[verbatim quote]..." (Source, Date — original URL | archived). For research-brief and KB entries: archive every primary source on first use. For marketing pages citing sources via the KB: the KB entry is the archive layer; marketing pages link to the KB. Quarterly link-checker pass per the nine-step plan above. Candid-authored research artifacts get DOIs via Zenodo (free).

Rule 4 — Publish a public corrections log and retraction policy

Every Candid Creative public artifact (website, KB, client deliverable) is governed by a public corrections log + retraction policy following the four-magnitude playbook. Material corrections trigger a specific editorial-process change — never a silent edit pretending the original was correct.

Why: Trust Project / Reach Plc showed trust in The Mirror jumped 8 points after adding Trust Indicators including a corrections protocol. COPE August 2025: "The purpose of retraction is to correct the literature... not to punish the authors" — the right disposition to import. Edelman 2025: 7 in 10 readers expect to be misled — visible corrections are the differentiation signal. AP / Trust Project standards make corrections visible as a feature, not a bug.

How to apply:

• Publish a public Corrections log linked from the candidcreative.ca footer.
• Categorize corrections by playbook magnitude (typo / substantive / material / fundamentally wrong).
• Update dateModified in structured data on every correction.
• For material corrections: top-of-page notice that persists for at least 90 days.
• For retractions: original URL serves the retraction notice; original text preserved in archive.
• Process discipline: every material correction traces to a specific editorial-process change. New check, new source-verification step, new automated guard. Document it in the corrections log.
• Quarterly transparency report: corrections issued, sources re-verified, link-rot rate in the KB.

Sources and confidence

Item	Source	Confidence
7-label confidence taxonomy	Candid Creative formal source-of-truth, 2026	Verified (canonical)
8-pattern citation library	Candid Creative, 2026	Verified (canonical)
What-to-source checklist	Candid Creative, 2026	Verified (canonical)
NYT 15-year link half-life, 13% content drift	Wikipedia synthesis citing 2021 NYT-link study — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_rot	Industry-consensus
Zittrain reference rot — 50% Supreme Court links, 70% Harvard Law Review links	Zittrain et al., Harvard Law Review, 2014 — see Zittrain et al. (Harvard Law 2014): 50% of URLs in U.S. Supreme Court opinions suffer reference rot	Verified
9-step link-rot mitigation plan	Candid Creative synthesis from Zittrain + NYT empirics, 2026	Verified (canonical)
4-magnitude retraction playbook	Candid Creative adaptation of COPE + Trust Project + AP standards, 2026	Verified (canonical)
COPE retraction purpose ("correct...not punish")	Committee on Publication Ethics, retraction guidelines, August 2025 update — https://publicationethics.org	Verified
BBC §3.2.2 "well sourced, sound evidence, thoroughly tested"	BBC Editorial Guidelines, 2019 ed. — https://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidelines/accuracy	Verified
BBC §3.3.4 single-source reluctance / §3.2.3 attribution	BBC Editorial Guidelines, 2019 ed.	Verified
SPJ "identify sources clearly"	SPJ Code of Ethics, 2014 revision — https://spj.org/spj-code-of-ethics	Verified
Washington Post two-source norm	Washington Post, December 2017	Industry-consensus
Reuters Handbook — anonymous sources weakest	Reuters Handbook of Journalism, last comprehensively revised 2012 — https://handbook.reuters.com	Verified
Reuters Trust Principles (1941; reaffirmed April 2008)	Thomson-Reuters merger documentation	Verified
Wikipedia verifiability not truth + four claim types	Wikipedia WP:V — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability	Verified
US Intelligence Community High/Moderate/Low taxonomy	ICD 203/206; 2007 NIE Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities; NPR + Harvard Belfer	Verified
Tetlock superforecasters / 10 commandments	Tetlock & Gardner, Superforecasting, 2015	Verified
CIS Confidence adaptation for cyber threat intel	Center for Internet Security	Verified
Zuegel epistemic-status as publishing-threshold lowerer	Devon Zuegel personal essays	Verified
Krycho framing — humility tool	Chris Krycho personal essays	Verified
FTC reasonable-basis doctrine — "the amount and type of substantiation the ad actually communicates"	FTC Policy Statement on Advertising Substantiation, 1984; FTC training materials — https://ftc.gov	Verified
FTC "Studies Show / Tests Prove / Doctors Recommend" trigger phrases	FTC training materials — https://ftc.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/training-materials/substantiation.pdf	Verified
Xlear v. FTC challenge, citing Loper Bright (2024)	Litigation status as of May 2026	Single-source / under review
Canadian portability — Competition Act general impression test	Competition Bureau; CRTC; provincial consumer-protection statutes	Industry-consensus
Google retired ClaimReview rich results (June 2025)	Poynter (IFCN), June 2025 — https://poynter.org/ifcn/2025	Verified
ClaimReview schema persists for non-Google AI ingestion	Bill Adair, Duke Reporters' Lab, via Poynter June 2025	Verified
Simhi et al. — "Models can hallucinate with high certainty even when they have the correct knowledge"	Simhi, Itzhak, Barez, Stanovsky, Belinkov — arXiv:2502.12964, February 2025 — https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.12964	Single-source
Broader LLM-hallucinate-confidently finding	Hallucination literature, multiple 2024-2025 sources	Industry-consensus
Vectara hallucination leaderboard (>50% on person fact recall)	Vectara, 2025-2026	Industry-consensus
"34% / MIT / January 2025" institutional attribution	Circulating in SEO/marketing blogs; not located in primary source	Single-source / Contested
Stats not supported by evidence catalogue (1-7)	Candid Creative synthesis, 2026	Verified (canonical)
Rule — every objective claim sourced with confidence label	Candid Creative operational rule, 2026	Verified (canonical)
Rule — cite with named source and URL	Candid Creative operational rule, 2026	Verified (canonical)
Rule — capture archive snapshot at citation time	Candid Creative operational rule, 2026	Verified (canonical)
Rule — publish corrections log and retraction policy	Candid Creative operational rule, 2026	Verified (canonical)

Linked standalone entries kept outside this page

• Research brief: Confidence Levels, Sources, and Dated Claims — why every statement on a credible site should be verifiable (piece 15 of 15) — the original research-discipline brief this page extends.
• Zittrain et al. (Harvard Law 2014): 50% of URLs in U.S. Supreme Court opinions suffer reference rot — the foundational link-rot empiric (50% / 70%) kept as a standalone citable atom.
• Wikipedia verifiability policy: all challenged material must carry an inline citation to a reliable published source — the broader policy framing in brief 3 (KB-backed websites).