Publication, Correction and Right-of-Reply Policy

1. Why a mechanism is not a policy

Trooth already has the mechanism. /network/dispute records a challenge from anyone, notifies the company when the page is claimed, and lets an operator settle the case. The database enforces the part that matters: the application role holds insert rights on the dispute table and no read policy at all, so a company cannot read, edit, close or erase a dispute filed against its own page. That is good engineering and it is already shipped.

What did not exist until this document is the policy the mechanism enforces. How long a contested fact stays published, what evidence closes a case, who decides, and what a reader sees while a case is open are all questions the code does not answer and cannot.

A dispute process without a published policy is a suggestion box. This document makes it a commitment.

2. A defect this policy exposes, stated first

The dispute-filed email tells a company:

Until this is settled the fact stays published and carries a dispute mark, because quietly removing a contested claim would be its own kind of lie.

The page does not render a dispute mark.

The capability exists. components/network/provenance.tsx defines a disputed provenance state with contested: true and a dashed-border rule so contested states cannot be skimmed past. The wiring does not: nothing outside lib/disputes.ts and the dispute API route reads network_disputes, so no profile surface ever asks whether a fact is contested. The public profile shows a link inviting a dispute and nothing else.

Trooth is therefore telling companies, in writing, that something appears on their page that does not appear. Section 6 sets out the two ways to make the sentence true and which one this policy adopts.

3. What is published, and on what basis

Scores appear only where a company has connected its own systems. An unclaimed listing carries factual identity and an outside-in observation, and never a score, a rank or a comparative judgment.

4. The right to challenge

Who may file. Anyone. No account, no relationship with Trooth, and no standing requirement. A company challenging a fact about itself, a customer challenging a fact about a vendor, and a member of the public who noticed something wrong are all treated identically.

What may be challenged. Any published fact, including its basis. "This is witnessed and it should be declared" is a valid challenge.

What filing costs. Nothing, and it never affects a score. Filing a dispute does not lower a score and withdrawing one does not raise it.

What filing does not do. It does not remove the fact. A fact under challenge stays published, marked, until the case is settled. Quietly removing a contested claim would let anyone erase an unwelcome finding by objecting to it, which would make every remaining fact worth less.

5. Timetable

These are commitments, not aspirations, and they are the operative content of this policy.

Where a case will exceed 30 business days, both parties are told before day 30, with the reason and a revised date. A case is never closed for age. Nothing is settled by nobody answering.

6. What a reader sees while a case is open

A fact under challenge is marked as contested and carries the date the challenge was filed. It is not hidden, not softened, and not removed.

This is the sentence the email already promises and the page does not keep. There are exactly two ways to make it true.

Option A, wire the mark. A public profile reads open disputes for the domain and passes disputed provenance to the affected fact, which the existing component already renders with a dashed border. This is the option this policy adopts, and it is the correct one because the promise is the right promise.

It carries one architectural consequence that must be decided deliberately rather than in passing: app_rw has no read policy on network_disputes, by design, so a public page cannot read the table through the application role. The choices are a narrow read policy exposing only the existence of an open case for a domain and no case content, or resolving the mark through the owner connection on a cached server render. The narrow policy is preferred, because putting the owner connection on a public path is the failure mode ADR-003 exists to prevent.

Option B, change the sentence. Edit lib/email/corporate.ts so the email says the fact stays published while the case is reviewed, without claiming a mark.

Option B is one line and removes a false statement today. Option A is the right end state. Ship B now and A next, because a false promise in a live email is a worse thing to carry than an unfinished feature.

7. What closes a case

A case is settled by a Trooth operator. Never by the company the fact concerns, and never by the party that filed. Both would make the outcome worth nothing, and the database enforces the first.

Anything Trooth cannot substantiate is withdrawn. The burden sits with the publisher, which is the correct place for it, and it does not shift because a challenge was filed late or awkwardly.

The outcome text is written once and sent verbatim to both parties. It is stored and never overwritten: a case settles once, and a second attempt to settle the same case is refused rather than rewriting history.

8. Right of reply

Separate from a correction, and available whether or not a case was filed.

A company may submit a response to any observation on its listing. An accepted response is displayed alongside the observation, not instead of it, and is attributed to the company. Trooth does not edit responses for content.

A correction changes what is published because it was wrong. A reply leaves the observation standing and adds the company's account of it. A company that disagrees with a fact Trooth has upheld has the reply, and the reply is not a consolation prize. It is on the page, in the company's own words, next to the finding.

Trooth declines a reply only where it names an identifiable individual, contains unlawful material, or is not about the observation it attaches to. A declined reply is explained.

9. Escalation

A party that believes a case was settled wrongly may ask for it to be reopened once, in writing, stating what was not considered. A reopened case is settled by a different reviewer where one exists.

Today no second reviewer exists. Trooth has one person. This is recorded rather than dressed up: at present, escalation means the same person looking again with the new material in front of them, and both parties are told that. When a second person joins, this section takes effect as written without further amendment.

10. Records

Every case is retained with its filing, its notifications, its outcome and its timestamps, whether it was upheld, corrected or withdrawn.

Records of withdrawn and corrected facts are retained, not deleted. The point of a correction record is to show what the page used to say. A correction history that can be erased is not a correction history.

Aggregate statistics are published annually: cases filed, cases by outcome, and median time to settle. Individual cases are not published, and the filer's identity is never published.

11. Questions for counsel at first review

Recorded so the first legal conversation starts from a list. Their presence does not qualify anything above; this policy is in force as written.

1. Whether keeping a contested fact published with a mark, rather than suspending it, is the right posture for defamation exposure, and whether the answer differs for an adverse finding about a named company.
2. Whether the timetable in section 5 creates an enforceable commitment Trooth may fail to meet, and whether it should be expressed as a target instead.
3. Whether the retention of withdrawn facts in section 10 is compatible with erasure rights where a fact touched an identifiable person.
4. Whether publishing annual aggregate dispute statistics creates exposure that outweighs the credibility it buys.
5. Whether the single-reviewer disclosure in section 9 is better stated publicly, as it is here, or handled privately per case.