The same rules apply to everyone.

Content rules

1. Primary sources outrank summaries. Every factual claim is anchored in a citable document. Material that cannot be sourced is not published.
2. Verbatim where verbatim matters. Quoted ordinance text, quoted assistant messages, and quoted public statements are reproduced exactly, with the source identified next to the quote. Where an OCR step is required (scanned PDFs), the OCR provenance is noted.
3. No paraphrase passed off as quote. If a sentence is in a blockquote, it is the source’s actual sentence. If it’s framing, it’s outside the blockquote.
4. Named individuals are named in their public capacity only. Public officials are named as members of the body they sit on. Residents acting in public-facing capacities (e.g., a Facebook group founder operating under a real name with the founder’s consent) are named with that consent. Private individuals are not identified.
5. No personal contact details for private individuals. Phone, address, email, license-plate, employer, school, family-member details of private citizens are never published. Public-office contact information (city-hall switchboard, EDC executive director’s posted work email) is in scope; personal mobile numbers are not.
6. Falsifiers are listed. Every case file ends with a section of open questions that, if resolved against the page’s claims, would require updates. The page tells the reader where it could be wrong.

Naming and identification

1. Public officials are identified by name, public role, and public contact only.
2. Police officers, prosecutors, judges, and other officials acting in their official capacity are named when they have taken a public action on the record (signed an order, voted, testified).
3. Witnesses, complainants, victims, and minors are not named regardless of the source.
4. For AI-safety material: the model and operator (e.g., “Grok 4, xAI”) are named. The user is named only with their consent.
5. HeardTogether will redact a name that the source itself redacted, even if the name appears elsewhere in the public record.

Conduct expected of any referenced material

HeardTogether links out to peer civic groups (residents’ coalitions, neighborhood Facebook groups, mutual-aid mailing lists). Inclusion in those links is not endorsement, but the linking itself imposes a baseline expectation:

• No doxxing.
• No threats.
• No targeted harassment.
• No publication of private contact details for private individuals.
• No false statements of fact about identified individuals.

A peer resource that violates these guidelines may be removed from the “related” sections of HeardTogether case files without notice. The decision is the maintainer’s; the rule itself is the load-bearing constraint, not any particular interpretation.

Corrections

1. Corrections that name a primary source are processed promptly. A reader who says “the council vote on Ord. 2024-12-01 was not unanimous” and provides a citation to the minutes or to a council member’s on-the-record statement will see the page updated, the previous statement struck-through (not deleted), and the change noted in a small revision footer.
2. Corrections without a source are not processed. “That’s not what happened” without a citation does not produce a change.
3. Strikethroughs are preserved. When a fact on the site is found to be wrong, the original text remains in place with a strikethrough; the correction appears next to it. This is so a reader can see what changed and why.
4. Material removal is logged, not silent. If a passage has to come off the site entirely (e.g., a source was withdrawn under court order), the page records that a removal occurred and gives the reason.

Things this site will not do

• Will not accept anonymous tips that name private individuals.
• Will not use AI to generate content on the site.
• Will not track readers (no analytics, no cookies, no fingerprinting, no remote fonts).
• Will not accept payment for inclusion, removal, or framing of any case file.
• Will not coordinate with political campaigns, candidate committees, or PACs.
• Will not issue press releases, run a newsletter, or maintain social-media accounts.
• Will not publish the site’s maintainer’s home address, family member details, or private contact information.

Why the rules are simple

The rules are short on purpose. Each one is something the maintainer would be willing to be held to publicly if it were violated. A longer rule set looks more rigorous; in practice it produces exceptions and edge cases that drift the operation away from its actual purpose, which is to make documents easier to read.

Rules last reviewed 2026-05-23. The rule set is intentionally stable; substantive changes will be dated in this section.