These rules are dated 25 October 2026. They are published as the museum's authenticity policy.
What we admit
Each book, article, image or artefact is admitted, labelled or refused as a whole. The gate asks whether the item is what its title and author say it is, and whether the copy comes from the edition or institution it names.
What the gate checks
Who wrote the item, and whether the author's school is verified from named sources. Whether the copy is a real, identified edition or a catalogued institutional copy. Where it came from, and whether that place appears on a known spam or phishing list.
What the gate does not check
It does not check whether each statement in a work is true, and it does not change what the work says. Summaries are written with AI and labelled as such. They are not checked line by line.
Three decisions
Accept: a verified Sunni author and a validated copy. Label: a genuine copy shown with its school, or with 'school not verified'. Reject: a copy that cannot be validated, or that comes from a blocked source.
Sources we rely on
Each source is listed in the public register with its tier and status. Wikipedia and Wikidata are pointers, not proof that an item is authentic.
Corrections
Report a problem through the issue form. Each report and its outcome is recorded.
What we keep for each book
For each harvested book we keep a record: its title, its author and the author's dates, the era it belongs to, the decision and who made it, the checks made and their results, and a SHA-256 fingerprint of each harvested file, so that a copy can later be shown to be unchanged. The record holds no book text. The records are published in the repository.
Where the rules live
The rules are in the public repository: the policy, the register, the validator and the harvest gate. Anyone can read them and check them.
Where the rules live
How we decide what to show · authenticity.yaml · check-authenticity.ts · authenticity_gate.py