Methods
Methods
Methods for assessing evidence and maintaining defensible context, each with its steps, the checks a reader can run afterwards and the pitfalls that recur.
- Auditing an LLM answer against its sources
Split an answer into claims and inspect cited passages for support, inference and missing qualifications.
- Citing at the sentence
Bind each assertion to the exact source passage, its locator, reading date and retained copy.
- Declaring unknowns
Distinguish not found, blocked by licence and not applicable, with a dated search boundary.
- Detecting source drift
Compare current source content with the retained cited version and reassess changed support.
- Estimating source reliability
Assess a source for a defined property and period using checked outcomes and visible uncertainty.
- Evaluating extraction against a gold set
Compare extracted claims with reviewed annotations, including spans, scope and abstentions.
- Measuring declared absence
Score supported unknowns as distinct outcomes, with search scope and reason assessed separately.
- Reporting source conflicts
Preserve competing values and their grounds until a scoped decision can be defended.
- Reproducing a past state
Reconstruct what was known at a specified instant using observation time, effective time and earlier decisions.
- Resolving identity by rule
Make each same-entity or different-entity decision explicit, evidenced, reviewed and reversible.
- Retaining source copies
Preserve the material actually read, subject to rights, and bind its citation with a content digest.
- Scoping a first record
Start with one contested entity and a bounded decision, then test whether its evidence can be defended.
- Separating reader clearance
Specify who may inspect each value and its evidence, including passages that disclose restricted material.
How to read a method note
Each note states the problem, the steps, the checks a reader can run afterwards and the pitfalls that recur. The checks matter most: a method is only useful if a person who did not apply it can tell whether it was applied. Every note links to the vocabulary it relies on and to published work for further reading.
The notes are written to be combined. Citing at the sentence needs a retained copy of the source; reproducing a past state needs both time axes; declaring an unknown needs a recorded search. A team adopting one method will usually find that it pulls in two or three of the others, and the cross-links on each page show which.
Elsewhere in the reference
- Glossary of terms used in the methods
- Comparisons of approaches
- Directory of identifiers and standards
- Citing at the sentence
- Reproducing a past state
- Declaring unknowns
- Scoping a first record
Background reading
Found an error on this page? See corrections for what counts as one, how to report it and the dated log.
Enquiry
Bring one entity you already argue about.
Send the entity, the sources you fuse to describe it today and who may read which of them. We reply with what a first record would cover and what it would need from you.
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