062-Drafts may circulate at the root behind a draft banner

Type: ../types/adr.md · Status: superseded

Status: superseded by ADR 063 Date: 2026-08-04

Context

ADR 057 made placement the exclusion mechanism — articles/drafts/** is site-excluded, and relocating to the collection root is publication. ADR 061 added the working paper as the state for circulating an article whose claims are open, and rejected circulating a draft because the status would then describe neither the article's visibility nor its revisability.

Operating the first two articles surfaced a need neither state serves. The operator wants outside comments while an article's central thesis is still moving — the reflective self-improvement article changed its thesis several times within days. The working-paper contract is wrong for that text twice over: its version/revised handles advertise a stability the text does not have, and its framing invites reference to claims the collection is not yet willing to stand behind. What was missing is a public state that promises nothing: visible, commentable, and free to pivot silently.

Decision

A draft may be relocated to the collection root to request comments. Placement governs visibility — the drafts/ subtree stays site-excluded, and moving a draft to the root is a public act requiring explicit operator approval, as for the other public states. Status governs the reader contract: draft at the root means the claims, structure, and central thesis may change without notice, with no version or revised obligations and silent rewrites expected.

Every root-placed draft opens with an authored draft banner. A short blockquote before the body states that everything may still change and where to send comments. It must not promise stability: no version handles, no revision log, no language that invites treating the text as a fixed reference. The banner is authored rather than generated, keeping ADR 057's no-custom-rendering stance; a status-driven generated banner can return if a forgotten banner ever ships (the worked-failure rule).

Each root-placed draft has a deliberate discovery path. A draft intended as a collection entry point is listed in kb/articles/README.md under "In draft". A supporting draft may instead remain unlisted when a listed root article links to it deliberately. This revises ADR 057's rejected alternative "draft in the collection root, rendered but unlisted": an authored incoming link makes the placement deliberate rather than an accident discoverable only through site search.

The lifecycle gains one forward step. Excluded draft → root draft (request for comments) → working paper (claims stable enough for version handles) → published (frozen). Each transition needs explicit approval naming the target state. This answers ADR 061's objection to circulated drafts: status describes revisability and maturity, placement describes visibility, and the banner makes the combination legible on the page itself.

Operativity path: kb/articles/COLLECTION.md binds authoring and collection-conformance review with the banner, discovery-path, and no-stability-promise clauses; kb/articles/README.md lists the main reflective-self-improvement draft, which links to the unlisted human-inclusive self-revision companion; the ProperDocs metadata line continues to render status, and the site's page-bottom comments system receives the feedback each banner invites.

Considered alternatives

Circulate as working papers (ADR 061's route). Rejected for these texts. The version/revised contract is a stability promise; while a thesis is still pivoting the promise either goes stale or generates noise revisions, and the state's framing advertises a maturity the collection does not claim yet.

Keep drafts excluded and gather comments off-site. Rejected: no stable URL, no resolved links into the KB, and a commenter cannot point at the passage they dispute.

Generate the banner from status in the build. Deferred under the worked-failure rule ADR 057 applied to rendering: an authored blockquote is inspectable in the source file and works today; forgetting it is a conformance-review catch until a mechanical failure proves otherwise.

Free choices left open: whether a working paper may demote back to a root draft when its thesis reopens (no case yet); whether the banner wording should standardize beyond its two required elements (everything-may-change, where to comment).

Consequences

Easier:

  • Comments can arrive while the argument is still being formed, which is when they are cheapest to act on.
  • The label is honest: a pivoting text is presented as a pivoting text.
  • The working-paper decision waits until the thesis stops moving, instead of being forced by the desire for feedback.

Harder / accepted costs:

  • Three public states to keep accurately labelled and deliberately discoverable; conformance review gains banner and discovery-path checks, and nothing mechanical enforces them yet.
  • A disagreement with a root draft cannot name which text it disputes — there is no version handle by design. Accepted: that is inherent to requesting comments on a moving draft.
  • Readers who ignore the banner may still treat the text as settled; the banner bounds the collection's promise, not reader behavior.

Relevant Notes: