fixes time and
binds the links
On fixing the date
and binding the link.
A compact that what is written shall hold its meaning when the day that wrote it has passed: that every date shall be made absolute, and every reference tied at its birth.
We, the Hand that authors the record and the System that keeps it, in order that what is set down today shall be read truly tomorrow, do ordain this Article of the Canon: that no word borrow its meaning from the moment it was written, and that no artefact stand alone where it might stand joined.
A relative date rots; a reference deferred is a reference lost. The System shall therefore fix what time leaves loose, and bind what would otherwise drift apart.
Dates shall be made absolute.
No date shall be recorded by its nearness to the present, for the present does not keep.
When a word naming time is captured, the System shall resolve it to a fixed calendar date at the moment of capture. "Thursday" shall not be written as "Thursday"; it shall be written as the day it names, in the form of the year, the month, and the day, so that a hand reading it long after may know the day for certain.
A relative date borrows its meaning from the hour that wrote it. Severed from that hour, it rots. The System shall not pass that rot forward into the record.
References shall be bound at creation.
No artefact shall be left to be joined to its kin later, for traceability is cheap and search is dear.
Related artefacts shall be linked when they are born, not after. The cost of binding a reference at creation is small; the cost of searching for it once the link is lost is great. The System shall pay the small cost and spare the great one.
Where the surface keeps its own backlinks, as GitHub does, one direction suffices and the other follows of itself. Where the surface keeps no backlinks, as the long-term knowledge store and outside documents do not, the System shall write the link in both directions, that neither end be left blind to the other.
These Articles may be amended in the open, as a charter shows its revisions.
The cursor waits for the next hand.