Editorial Passes

What `editorial_pass` and `claim_type` mean — how the project tracks its voice and epistemic discipline over time.

≈ 6 min read 1023 words Updated 2026-08-29

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Two frontmatter fields encode the project’s editorial discipline:

  • claim_type — the epistemic status of a page’s main claim
  • editorial_pass — the editorial campaign under which a page was last fundamentally rewritten

Both fields are required on new entries. Together they let future readers (and future-you) tell at a glance whether an entry reflects current framing.

editorial_pass#

A date-coded marker (YYYY-MM) on each page recording the editorial campaign that last fundamentally rewrote it.

Why this exists#

The corpus periodically goes through editorial passes — campaigns where the project’s voice, vocabulary, or framing shifts and a batch of entries gets rewritten to match. Without the field, you can’t tell which entries reflect the current framing and which are pre-reframe holdovers.

Current passes#

CodeWhat changed
2026-05First major pass under the modern, working-hypothesis, human-civilization framing. Drops “democratization” / “knowledge base” / “lore” register; tightens claim discipline; uses “Elohim were a small advanced human civilization” rather than “extraterrestrial.” Also included a library-book editorial sub-pass that split 35 long paragraphs across TBWTT, ETTMTTP, and LWTE into 83 pieces — see Paragraph Split Tooling.
2026-08Decontamination pass. Repaired the May 2026 generation incident’s filler prose across the English wiki corpus — marker-guided de-slop with a preserve-citations rule, oversized descriptions split into summary / tldr / keywords, factual fixes reported first and applied in follow-up commits. Entries fundamentally rewritten in the campaign carry this stamp. See Wiki Decontamination.

Future passes will be added here as they happen.

A pass can include both content rewrites (wiki, articles, essentials) and library-book editorial work (paragraph splits, attribution fixes, OCR cleanup). Both kinds of work mark the entries they touch with the same editorial_pass date code.

When to set the field#

Set editorial_pass whenever you fundamentally rewrite an entry — not for a typo fix, a reference addition, or a small wording tweak.

Set the field to the date code of the current pass:

[extra]
editorial_pass = "2026-05"

If you create a new entry from scratch under current framing, also set the field to the current pass code.

Grandfathering#

Entries from before the first pass don’t have the field. Backfill is editor’s call. When you re-read a legacy entry and find it still aligns with the current framing without rewrites, you may set the field to the current pass code as an explicit “checked, still good” stamp.

Filtering#

Future tooling can filter:

  • Entries reflecting current framing: editorial_pass == "2026-05"
  • Legacy entries needing review: field absent or earlier date
  • Entries from a specific campaign: editorial_pass == "<code>"

claim_type#

Every page declares the epistemic status of its main argument. The value is rendered as a small colored pill near the page title.

Values#

ValueMeaningBadge color
directThe claim is explicit in a primary source AND uncontroversial mainstream — a textual fact, a scientific fact, or a direct description of project/methodologycyan
frameworkA foundational premise of the Wheel of Heaven framework — explicit in the Raëlian canon but not endorsed by mainstream scholarshipmauve
inferredThe claim is a reasonable reading of a source, not literally stated but consistent with ityellow
speculativeThe claim is interpretive synthesis going beyond what any single source stateslavender

How to choose#

  1. Read the main claim of the page — the thing the page is actually asserting.
  2. Is this claim literally in a source AND mainstream-uncontroversial? If yes → direct.
  3. Is it explicit in the Raëlian canon but not endorsed by mainstream scholarship? If yes → framework. This is the right slot for the project’s foundational premises — don’t bury them under direct (which implies mainstream agreement) or speculative (which implies the claim isn’t in any single source).
  4. Is it a reasonable reading that a scholar might arrive at without a leap? If yes → inferred.
  5. Otherwise: speculative. Be honest about this — speculative isn’t a weakness, it’s a label of intellectual transparency.

Examples#

direct:

  • A wiki entry that defines a term using the term’s primary-source definition
  • A timeline entry stating the start and end years of a precessional age (astronomical fact)
  • A page describing the project’s own method

framework:

  • The Elohim as an extraterrestrial civilization
  • The embassy as the Third Temple
  • The precessional-age cosmology as governing structure

inferred:

  • A wiki entry that draws together multiple sources to characterize a figure
  • An Article that reads the Sumerian Anunnaki and the biblical Nephilim as describing the same kind of being
  • Comparative-religion readings that connect dots a single source doesn’t draw

speculative:

  • Cross-cultural theomachy convergence
  • The Doubled Signature principle (extends Hamlet’s Mill)
  • Speculative cosmology beyond what mainstream physics has measured

Set it in [extra]#

[extra]
claim_type = "inferred"

The badge color renders automatically; you don’t need to touch templates.

Why we mark this#

The wiki has 100+ entries. Some are textbook-style definitions. Some are interpretive synthesis. A reader needs to know which kind of claim they’re reading. The pill gives them that signal at a glance, before they commit to reading the entry.

It also disciplines authors: if you can’t articulate which value applies, you probably haven’t thought clearly enough about what the entry is actually claiming.

Both fields together#

A new entry written today, under current framing, with a reasonable reading of multiple sources:

+++
title = "Council of Eternals"
description = "The governing body of the Elohim civilization, described in Raëlian source texts."
template = "wiki-page.html"

[extra]
claim_type = "direct"
editorial_pass = "2026-05"
category = "Core Concepts"
+++

A legacy entry someone has re-read and confirmed still works without rewrites:

[extra]
claim_type = "inferred"
editorial_pass = "2026-05"  # explicit "checked, still good" stamp

A legacy entry, untouched:

[extra]
claim_type = "inferred"
# editorial_pass not set — predates the 2026-05 pass

Backfill status#

  • Done: all 7 English essentials + 1 article (as a model)
  • Pending: ~102 wiki entries, ~15 timeline entries, all translations
  • Automatic: all 67 resources have claim_type = "direct" from the source-program backfill (they describe sources, not claims)

If you find yourself working on a legacy entry that needs more than a typo fix, that’s a good moment to do the backfill — drop the modern frontmatter on it as part of the same PR.

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