Compiled by: Dvir Damri (Damrizz)
Started: 2026
Current Structure: 2026 Research Vault
dvirgg2323@gmail.com
https://github.com/dvirdamrizz69
Discord: damrizz69
Purpose
This document defines the research rules used throughout the archive.
Its purpose is to make the archive more consistent, more transparent, and easier to evaluate critically.
It exists to clarify:
- what kinds of sources are prioritized
- how institutional material is handled
- what counts as a strong or weak assertion
- how disagreement and uncertainty are recorded
- how notes should distinguish fact, interpretation, and speculation
This archive is not built on volume alone.
It is built on traceability, relevance, comparison, and disciplined interpretation.
Core Principles
1. Evidence over convenience
Claims are not included because they are emotionally effective, rhetorically useful, or popular online.
A claim is included only when it can be examined against identifiable evidence.
2. Traceability over repetition
A repeated claim is not treated as established merely because it appears often.
The archive prioritizes sources that can be traced directly to documents, data, texts, or clearly identifiable records.
3. Interpretation must be separated from fact
A note may contain both facts and analysis, but they should not be blurred together.
Whenever possible, the archive distinguishes between:
- what happened
- what was claimed
- what can reasonably be inferred
- what remains disputed or uncertain
4. Strong claims require strong support
The more serious, sweeping, or legally loaded the claim, the stronger the evidence standard should be.
This applies especially to allegations involving genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, terrorism, colonialism, or legal guilt.
Source Prioritization
Sources are generally evaluated according to the following order of preference.
1. Peer-Reviewed Academic Research
- university presses
- academic journals
- archaeological publications
- historical demography and population studies
- serious academic monographs and review works
2. Primary Historical, Legal, and Religious Texts
- archival documents
- treaties and legal instruments
- court materials
- official contemporaneous records
- Tanakh, Talmud, Midrash, and major rabbinic writings when relevant to a claim
3. Methodologically Transparent Data
- large-scale surveys and demographic datasets
- national statistical agencies
- reputable polling organizations with clear methods
- research institutes with transparent methodology
4. Academic and Reference Institutions
- universities and academic departments
- museums and archaeological institutes
- academic encyclopedias and reference works
5. Institutional and Government Documentation
- UN documents
- government investigations
- official statements and resolutions
- military, diplomatic, or intelligence assessments
These may be highly relevant, but relevance is not the same as neutrality.
Institutional sources are often essential, but they are not exempt from scrutiny.
6. Established News Reporting and Press Documentation
Reporting from established international news organizations is useful and frequently cited across the archive, but sits below primary documents, official records, and academic sources for factual claims.
Useful for:
- documenting that a statement, event, or incident was publicly reported at a specific time
- recording what a government, official, or public figure said on the record
- establishing a timeline of events where no primary document yet exists
- sourcing quotes and public statements that have not been compiled into official records
Organizations whose reporting may be used in this category include AP, Reuters, AFP, BBC, The Guardian, The New York Times, Haaretz, Times of Israel, and similar outlets with editorial standards and correction policies.
News reporting should be read with the following in mind:
- a news report documents what was reported, not necessarily what is proven
- editorial framing, source selection, and institutional bias vary across outlets and topics
- breaking or early reporting may be revised, corrected, or contradicted by later investigation
- a quote sourced through a news article should ideally be traced to the original transcript, statement, or recording when the exact wording matters
- repeated citation of the same outlet across many notes in a cluster may indicate over-reliance on a single editorial perspective
Where a primary document, official record, or academic source covers the same point, that source is preferred over news reporting.
7. Advocacy and NGO Reports
Reports produced by human rights organizations, think tanks, or issue-advocacy bodies fall below institutional government documentation in the source hierarchy.
These sources can be useful for documenting patterns, recording organizational legal positions, or supplying data where no government or academic source covers the specific issue.
They should be read with the following in mind:
- advocacy reports are not court findings
- an NGO conclusion does not carry the weight of a judicial ruling or a peer-reviewed study
- the mandates and funding structures of advocacy organizations may create framing that affects how evidence is selected and presented
- where possible, NGO claims are checked against academic research, primary legal instruments, or independent investigations
Use of UN and Other Institutional Sources
Many topics in this archive rely in part on documents produced by governments, international organizations, political actors, or intergovernmental bodies.
This includes United Nations material.
Because UN documents appear often in public argument, this archive uses a more explicit rule for them.
1. UN material can be used as documentation
A UN report, statement, press release, resolution, commission output, or agency publication may be used to document:
- what the UN or a UN body officially said
- what allegation or concern was raised
- what terminology was used
- what position or finding was recorded
- what an institution was publicly asserting at a given time
This is a documentary use.
It records the existence of the claim or institutional position.
It does not automatically validate the claim itself.
2. UN material may contain relevant factual detail, but not beyond scrutiny
UN documents sometimes contain useful timelines, statistics, site references, legal framing, or descriptive reporting.
That material may be cited, but should be handled carefully.
Where possible, important factual claims drawn from UN material are checked against one or more of the following:
- academic scholarship
- archival material
- independent investigations
- other primary documentation
- transparent datasets
3. UN authority is not treated as self-proving
This archive does not assume that a proposition becomes settled merely because:
- a UN body said it
- a UN expert stated it
- a UN commission alleged it
- a UN office used strong legal language
Institutional prestige does not remove the need for comparison, context, or scrutiny.
4. Different UN bodies should not be collapsed into one undifferentiated authority
The UN is not a single voice.
Different bodies, offices, agencies, rapporteurs, commissions, and political organs operate under different mandates, standards, evidentiary practices, and political pressures.
For that reason, this archive avoids treating “the UN” as a single monolithic source.
5. Institutional critique is part of the archive itself
The archive explicitly includes institutional analysis in:
05 UN System and International Bodies
└── UN credibility and structural critique
That section examines patterns such as:
- structural incentives
- politicization
- selective emphasis
- credibility issues
- operational failures
- confusion between reporting, advocacy, and judgment
Therefore, citing a UN document in one note while critiquing UN institutional performance elsewhere is not contradictory.
It reflects the distinction between:
- using a document as evidence of an institutional record
- evaluating the reliability and behavior of the institution that produced it
6. Practical rule for UN use inside claim notes
When a UN source appears in a claim note, it should normally be read in one of these categories:
- documentary: evidence of what the UN said or alleged
- descriptive: factual detail that still requires caution and comparison
- analytical target: a source being examined as an example of institutional framing, bias, or error
Sources Used With Caution
The following source types may be useful, but they should not normally be treated as sufficient on their own for major factual conclusions:
- Wikipedia
- social media posts
- viral clips detached from source context
- activist blogs and partisan opinion sites
- highly editorialized commentary
- unsourced graphics or repost chains
- institutional claims that are repeated without underlying evidence
These sources may appear in the archive to:
- identify a circulating claim
- locate a narrative worth investigating
- preserve examples of public rhetoric
- trace how a story spread
They do not serve as the sole basis for major conclusions.
Internal archive PDFs
Some claim notes reference PDF documents that exist inside the archive vault without verified public URLs. These are internal archive sources.
They are used as reference material inside the vault but cannot be verified by outside readers without a public link. Where a claim note relies heavily on an internal PDF, that limitation is noted in the source entry.
Source Spines (SS)
A Source Spine, shortened as SS, is a central source hub for a major topic or claim cluster.
It is different from a normal claim note. A claim note focuses on one specific claim. A Source Spine focuses on the sources behind a wider topic.
The point of a Source Spine is to keep the archive clean. Instead of repeating the same sources again and again across many claim notes, the main source base can sit in one organized place.
A good Source Spine collects the strongest primary sources, useful secondary sources, background sources, key quotes, page numbers, and source notes for a topic. It also helps show which sources are strongest, which are only supporting context, and which sources should not carry the main argument by themselves.
Source Spines also serve as the main home for internal archive PDFs. These are documents stored locally inside the vault that cannot be verified by outside readers without a public link. When a claim note draws on an internal PDF, that PDF should be housed and described inside the relevant Source Spine, with a local Obsidian link, a short explanation of what the document covers, and a note that it is an internal archive source unavailable at a public URL.
Source Spines are useful for topics that appear across many claims, such as Resolution 242, Oslo II, protected sites, UNRWA, the British Mandate, refugee law, settlements, or Hamas use of civilian infrastructure.
The Source Spine does not replace sourcing inside claim notes. Claim notes still need direct evidence for their specific argument. The Source Spine exists as the wider source base behind the topic.
In simple terms:
A claim note answers a claim. A Source Spine stores the source backbone for a topic. Internal archive PDFs belong in the Source Spine for their topic, linked locally and labeled as internal sources.
check the bookmarks to see the entire SS collection
How Claim Notes Are Structured
Each claim note in the archive follows the same structure. This section explains what each part contains so readers know where to look for what.
Claim
The specific public accusation or argument being examined, stated in one sentence.
Status
A classification of the claim based on the available evidence. Possible statuses include: False, Misleading, Disputed, Partially true, True but incomplete, Legally contested, Historically contested, Overstated, Unproven, or Unsupported.
Key Counterpoints
The strongest factual, legal, or historical objections to the claim. These are the core of each note.
Evidence
The specific factual points that support the status assessment. These are kept short and traceable.
Primary Sources
The main documents, data, and records used to ground the note’s argument.
Note on the “primary” label:
The PRIMARY SOURCES section is named for its structural role inside the note, not as a guarantee that every listed source meets the strict academic definition of a primary source.
In academic practice, a primary source is a firsthand original document: a treaty, a court judgment, a census record, a founding text. Secondary sources analyze or interpret those originals.
In this archive, PRIMARY SOURCES means the sources that most directly ground the note’s argument. Depending on the claim, that may include original legal instruments, government publications, court materials, statistical datasets, expert legal analyses, or organizational reports where no stronger original document exists for that specific point.
Some entries are secondary by strict academic definition. They appear when they are the clearest available statement of a position, when no single primary instrument exists for the argument being made, or when context is necessary for the source to be useful.
The source declaration labels next to each entry (↑↑↑ Best source!, ↑↑↑ best source!, ↑↑↑ mid source, ↑↑↑ worst source! 😭) reflect how directly useful that source is for that specific claim, not its position on the primary vs secondary scale.
Strongest Counterarguments Worth Knowing
The most serious objections from the other side. These are not strawmen. They represent the strongest version of the opposing argument.
Notes
Nuance, caveats, legal thresholds, debate tactics, and anything that changes how the claim should be read or used.
See More
Links to broader source spines, background documents, and general topic material connected to the claim cluster. These are for wider context, not direct proof of the specific claim.
Related Claims
Links to other claim notes in the archive that share overlapping arguments, evidence, or debate territory.
Standards of Assertion
No claim is included simply because it is emotionally persuasive or politically useful.
Every factual assertion in the archive aims to be:
- traceable to a source
- independently checkable
- proportional to the available evidence
- phrased at the right level of certainty
Where certainty is limited, the wording reflects that.
- “according to” is used when a fact is institution-specific
- “alleged” is used when an accusation is reported but not independently established
- “suggests” or “may indicate” is used when inference is reasonable but incomplete
- contested interpretation is not presented as settled fact
Handling Disagreement and Uncertainty
When credible disagreement exists, it is recorded rather than erased.
This archive distinguishes between:
- disagreement over facts
- disagreement over interpretation
- disagreement over legal classification
- disagreement created by weak sourcing or missing data
Minority views may be included when relevant, but they are labeled clearly.
Absence of evidence is not treated as evidence by itself.
Lack of certainty is not treated as proof of the opposite conclusion.
Bias Control
Bias cannot be eliminated completely (As the author acknowledges), but it can be constrained.
This archive attempts to reduce distortion by:
- separating evidence from rhetoric
- distinguishing direct documentation from inference
- recording strong counterarguments instead of only weak ones
- comparing institutional claims against outside material
- avoiding prestige-based acceptance
- avoiding dismissal based only on dislike of the source
The goal is not fake neutrality.
The goal is disciplined evaluation.
Revision Standard
This archive is expected to change over time.
Notes may be revised when:
- better sources are found
- stronger counterarguments appear
- a legal or historical point was overstated
- wording failed to separate fact from interpretation clearly enough
- a note did not make proper use of uncertainty or source limits
Revision is not a weakness in the archive.
It is part of the method.
Guiding Principle
The point is not to sound convincing. The point is to actually know what you are talking about when it counts.
That means tracing claims to real sources, being honest about what the evidence does and does not prove, and not dressing up a weak argument with confident language.
Every note in this archive is built around that standard.
Human fallibility and corrective revision
Because this archive is researched, organized, and written by a human author, the possibility of error cannot be eliminated completely.
A claim may occasionally be framed too strongly, supported by evidence that is weaker than the argument requires, or missing the level of sourcing necessary for a complex historical, legal, or factual conclusion.
When such weaknesses are identified, they should be corrected rather than defended out of attachment or inertia. Readers who identify errors, weak sourcing, or mismatches between claim strength and evidentiary support are encouraged to notify the author and provide grounds for revision.
The governing standard is that claims should be updated, narrowed, reclassified, or removed when the available evidence does not justify them.