Contribute
Share sources without exposing people
Contribute source leads, context, questions, and corrections while keeping private information out of public pages.
Contribute
Help keep this project accurate by submitting sources, context, questions, corrections, and respectful community notes. Submissions are reviewed before publication.
Please do not submit private information about living people. Use pseudonyms when helpful, redact sensitive details, and avoid publishing personal contact information.
What makes a useful contribution here
- A source lead that can be checked by another reader.
- A place clue, institution clue, wording concern, or timeline correction that improves reviewability.
- A correction that narrows or clarifies a public claim instead of only arguing with it.
- A note that adds context without exposing living-person risk.
Choose the right lane
Community Note
Add context, a source lead, a place clue, a wording caution, or a careful question for editorial review.
Fact Check
Ask reviewers to inspect a specific claim that may be overstated, unsupported, mislabeled, or contradicted by a source.
Correction
Report a date, citation, label, privacy, accessibility, permissions, or wording issue that can be described clearly.
Safe Sharing
Read this first when a contribution involves living people, family details, contact information, DNA, private documents, or sensitive identity information.
Evidence-quality checklist
- Name the page, place, topic, or sentence you are responding to.
- Identify the source type: archive record, map, newspaper, oral history, community memory, museum page, scholarly source, or field observation.
- Explain what the source directly supports and what it does not support.
- Flag any contradiction, uncertainty, translation issue, name variation, boundary change, or privacy risk.
- Suggest safer wording if the current public language is too broad.
What happens after review
A contribution may become a Community Note, a Fact Check item, a correction, a source-review task, a place-hub update, or a held item if the public wording is not safe yet. The goal is not to publish every submission; the goal is to make the source trail more useful and less risky.
Contributor handoff packet
- Page or place being improved.
- Exact claim, source lead, correction, privacy issue, or classroom/accessibility need.
- Source type, public citation, and what the source can and cannot support.
- Recommended next lane: Community Note, Fact Check, Source Review, Claim Review, Safe Sharing, or hold.
Community Note
Add source-based context, a careful question, or a correction suggestion for editorial review.
Use a pseudonym if you want attribution. Do not include email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, private DNA data, or information about living people.
What this form adds
- It gives readers a public-safe way to add context, dates, place anchors, wording cautions, and source leads without editing pages directly.
- It moves useful community review into an editorial lane that can be checked, narrowed, and published responsibly.
- It keeps the project from relying on private inboxes for corrections and context.
Useful Community Note examples
- A public archive link that narrows a place, date, institution, route, or source holder.
- A wording caution that explains what a page can support and what it should not imply yet.
- A map, cemetery, church, school, newspaper, court, or directory clue that another reader can verify.
- A privacy warning that helps remove living-person details before public reuse.
Hold or decline reasons
- The note includes private contact details, living-person information, raw DNA data, or unredacted family records.
- The note makes an identity, ancestry, legal-status, descent, tribe, Nation, or membership claim without a reviewable source trail.
- The note argues from certainty or personal pressure instead of naming a source, page, sentence, or safer wording path.
Possible routing outcomes
A Community Note may become public context, a source-review task, a place-hub update, a correction lead, a fact-check request, or a held item if the public wording is not safe yet.
What remains open: A submission is a lead for editorial review, not an automatic publication or proof claim.
Fact Check Request
Ask for a claim to be reviewed against sources. Accepted requests are held for editorial review before publication.
Use a pseudonym if you want attribution. Do not include email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, private DNA data, or information about living people.
What this form adds
- It isolates the exact sentence, interpretation, or source use that needs review.
- It gives readers a formal way to challenge overreach without reducing the process to comment-thread argument.
- It helps the site build a visible public record of review pressure and correction paths.
Useful Fact Check examples
- A page sentence that sounds stronger than the source trail can support.
- A claim that blends record evidence, oral tradition, spiritual interpretation, or community memory without labeling the lanes.
- A source that contradicts, narrows, or complicates the current public wording.
- A missing citation, changed boundary, name variant, translation issue, OCR problem, or date conflict that affects the claim.
Hold or decline reasons
- The request does not quote or paraphrase a specific claim to review.
- The request asks the site to certify identity, ancestry, legal status, DNA, descent, tribe, Nation, or membership.
- The request depends on private documents, living-person details, or sensitive family material that cannot be reviewed publicly.
Possible routing outcomes
A Fact Check may end as supported, narrowed, relabeled, corrected, held, or unresolved. The safest result may be weaker public wording rather than a louder conclusion.
What remains open: A fact-check request can lead to narrower wording, a hold decision, a correction, or a stronger source packet, but the issue is not resolved until editorial review finishes.
Correction
Document a correction or revision for transparency.
Use a pseudonym if you want attribution. Do not include email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, private DNA data, or information about living people.
What this form adds
- It provides a direct route for documenting wording changes that affect trust, source strength, privacy, or interpretation.
- It helps keep public correction work visible instead of burying it in silent edits.
- It gives the site a cleaner accountability trail for revisions.
Useful Correction examples
- A date, name, title, place, link, source label, or quote boundary that is wrong or incomplete.
- A sentence that should be narrowed because the source supports less than the current wording suggests.
- A privacy, accessibility, attribution, or disclosure issue that affects reader trust.
Possible routing outcomes
A correction may update a page, create a corrections-log entry, trigger a source-review pass, or stay held until the public wording can be verified.
What remains open: A submitted correction still needs review, verification, and a publication decision before it changes the public record.