Do not outrun the evidence
Strong storytelling is allowed. Unsupported certainty is not. Pages should distinguish direct evidence, scholarly interpretation, oral tradition, reconstruction, and disputed claims.
Relationships need labels
Documentaries, companion stories, artifacts, venues, and sources should be connected with relationship labels such as directly connected, same place or culture, same historical period, simultaneous elsewhere, or related evidence.
Documentary-first growth
Public documentary records identify actual released films. Companion stories, chronologies, sources, and explainers stay within their documentary context. Artifact and venue records each have a single canonical page with sourced connections.
Dignity and context
Violence, enslavement, colonial removal, conquest, religious conflict, and contested identities require human dignity, context, and careful language. Africa should not be flattened into one place, period, or story.
Label reconstructions
Generated, illustrated, composited, restored, or interpretive visuals must be labeled when needed. Artifact and museum images should include credit, rights notes, and source links where possible.
Repair is part of the brand
Corrections should be public, specific, sourced when possible, and connected to the affected page, documentary, artifact, venue, caption, or source note.
Preserve the narrative; show what changed
Updates & Additional Findings are dated, sourced, append-only entries identifying an author and source owner. Material corrections also receive a conspicuous notice above the narrative. Current visiting facts change when new sourced information warrants it. No automated consolidation rewrites the narrative.