Skip to content

Event Chronicle Standard

The order of what happened

I am TANK, and I keep this standard's account. A chronicle is memory that kept its clock, and clocks are kept slowly: the order of what happened is the one thing the past still owns, and I let no convenient retelling take it.

An event chronicle is the thread that connects observation, decision, consequence, and repair. It makes time legible without pretending that a sequence alone explains meaning, responsibility, or harm.

Continue to the Memory Privacy and Minimization Standard for what the record owes the person inside it.

Purpose

This standard records events in a way that supports reconstruction without pretending that chronology alone proves causation. It covers operational, governance, incident, decision, and correction histories.

Event entry

An entry should state an event identifier, event class, source, subject, scope, time basis and precision, observed facts, recorder, transformations, confidence or uncertainty, sensitivity, related records, and correction status. Unknown times and inferred ordering must be labelled explicitly.

  • MEM3-R001: An event SHALL identify time basis, source, subject, location or scope, observed facts, transformation, and uncertainty.
  • MEM3-R002: Chronological order SHALL distinguish event time, observation time, recording time, and correction time.
  • MEM3-R003: Causality SHALL NOT be inferred from sequence alone; competing explanations and missing events remain visible.
  • MEM3-R004: Corrections and late-arriving evidence SHALL append without silently rewriting the earlier chronology.
  • MEM3-R005: A chronicle SHALL preserve privacy, minimization, access, retention, and legal-hold controls.
  • MEM3-R006: Event review SHALL distinguish event, observation, recording, publication, correction, and interpretation times.
  • MEM3-R007: Late evidence, duplicate reports, missing events, and competing chronologies SHALL remain visible with their evidentiary effect.
  • MEM3-R008: Causal claims SHALL link to separate reasoning or decision evidence and SHALL NOT rely on sequence alone.
  • MEM3-R009: This standard SHALL NOT collect live events, retroactively alter history, or publish private chronology.

Chronology review

Review the clock before you review the events; a chronicle with a bent clock bends everything on it. I check order the way I cross ground, one sure placement at a time, and I have never once regretted the slowness.

Reviewers should distinguish event time from observation, recording, publication, and correction time; identify gaps and duplicate reports; and test whether a later record has been mistaken for an earlier event. Late evidence is appended with its receipt and evidentiary effect. Causal claims require separate evidence and should link to a reasoning or decision record.

Worked example: a simulated three-entry chronicle

Set the entries down slowly and look at the clocks before the facts. I place them the way I cross ground, one at a time, because the distance between an entry's times is not noise; it is the truth about how the knowing arrived.

The chronicle below is a simulation. It collects no live event, alters no history, and publishes no chronology (MEM3-R009); its events, times, and identifiers are illustrative placeholders, and no authority, causality, or correction arises from it.

  • SIM-EVT-0001. A simulated service failed. Event time: day one, morning. Observation time: day one, midday, when monitoring first saw the failure. Recording time: day two, when the entry was written. Three clocks, three honest distances (MEM3-R002): the failure is older than the seeing, the seeing is older than the writing, and the entry says so instead of letting the recording day stand in for the event.
  • SIM-EVT-0002. A simulated configuration change, event time unknown. Its place after SIM-EVT-0001 carries an inferred-ordering label: the inference rests on the change referencing the failure, not on any clock, and the label stays on the entry so no reader mistakes a reasoned guess about order for a time the past actually gave (MEM3-R001).
  • SIM-EVT-0003. A correction, received on day nine: late evidence shows the failure began before dawn on day one, hours earlier than first observed. The correction appends as its own entry with its receipt and its evidentiary effect, and correction time is the fourth clock (MEM3-R002). SIM-EVT-0001 stands exactly as written, its morning event time now readable as what was known then, because the earlier entry was not wrong to be ignorant; it was early (MEM3-R004).

Read the three entries in order and the chronicle keeps its promises slowly: the clocks stay distinct, the inferred order says it is inferred, and the late knowing sits after the early knowing instead of replacing it. Nothing here says the change caused the failure or the failure caused the change; sequence alone is not permitted to say so (MEM3-R003), and this simulation has no separate evidence to offer.

Operating model and interpretation cases

The tempting misreading is always the same: letting what we learned later seep backward into what was known then. Hold the line. Yesterday is allowed to have been ignorant; that ignorance is a fact of the timeline, and protecting it is protecting the truth.

Chronicle review compares event time, observation time, recording time, publication time, correction time, source, transformation, uncertainty, duplicate reports, and missing periods. A timeline supports questions and reconstruction; causal or authoritative claims require separate evidence.

  • Conforming: Time basis, source, facts, uncertainty, corrections, privacy, and linked decisions are explicit.
  • Prohibited: Sequence alone proves causality or authority.
  • Boundary: Unknown ordering remains labelled while unaffected facts remain usable.
  • Failure: Late or conflicting evidence appends and narrows the chronology.
  • Loophole: A correction silently rewrites the earlier record.
  • Misuse: Chronology discloses private people or sensitive operations.
  • Care-control: Historical preservation supports repair while respecting dignity and minimization.

Design evidence

Chronicle review begins with the clocks and should reconcile event, observation, recording, publication, and correction times; source and transformation; duplicate or missing reports; uncertainty; privacy class; and linked decisions. A sequence may support a question for further reasoning but cannot by itself establish causality or authority.

This Draft authorizes no live event collection or historical publication. It does not permit retroactive alteration, unnecessary personal-data retention, or disclosure outside the applicable access purpose.

Where this document sits

This block is generated from the archive's own records when the site is built. It records position only and creates no authority.