The Wiki Reflects the Present

Every page carries the present sense of its concept, and only that. A reader meets the chart of the present course, not the log of the voyage.

No page keeps a history section, a struck draft, or a paragraph about what it used to say. What a reader meets is what is currently held, stated once, cleanly — which is what makes a page usable at all (Current Best Understanding · Current Best Articulation · Bottom Line Up Front).

Nothing is lost. The history is kept whole where a steward can find it: in the version record beneath the wiki, in the decision record for why a thing changed, and in the improvement log for what was learned (Decision Records · Improvement log · Change log · Provenance). A page may close with the date it is true as of, and a reader who asks why is sent to the decision record. The rule is about where history lives, not about whether it is kept.

When a page is retired the practice is exact: it is mined first. What still lands is set down — with its date, its source, and where it went — and only then is the page deleted. Nothing of meaning is left behind, and nothing dead stays in the reader's way (Weave, don't delete · Compost · Prune · Elision).

The reason given is navigational. We are steering a vessel toward a destination, and those aboard do not need to see the previous, less good versions; found without their context, old drafts do not inform, they confuse — and a reader cannot tell which of four versions is the live one (Navigation · One canonical home per concept · Comment).

The discipline this really demands is of the writer rather than the reader: to actually write the present sense, rather than layering a new paragraph on top of an old one and letting the page become a sediment of every hand that touched it (Be the canon, don't narrate it · Progressive canonization · Second reader).

Also called: the present-tense rule Stands on: Current Best Understanding · The LIØNSBERG Book of Conventions · The Record Opens onto: Decision Records · Weave, don't delete · One canonical home per concept · Name the Concept in the Singular · Link concepts, not coordinates · Semantic Capture · Improvement log · Be the canon, don't narrate it · Prune In play: the Workshop — applied every time a page is improved or retired Sources: The Wiki Reflects the Present (root page, canon-grade, dated on the page — the rule, where history is kept, the mining practice, and the navigational reason) · The Decision Log (root page) · lionsberg.wiki: The Wiki Reflects the Present Open: The convention depends on the version record and the archive of mined ore actually being reachable by an ordinary reader; whether they are is not addressed. · Three inbound links for a rule that governs every page.