Methodology

Source categories

The encyclopedia and archive aim for scholarly rigor through the source evaluation, attribution, preservation, and revision practices described here. These methods make evidence and its limits open to examination; they do not guarantee completeness or freedom from error.

1. Primary records: prompts, transcripts, source repositories, platform records, canonical texts, legal records, archives, and direct statements with identifiable provenance.
2. Specialist analysis: peer-reviewed research, technical audits, documented investigative work, and relevant scholarship.
3. Reliable secondary reporting: reporting and expert analysis that identify sources and distinguish claims from verification.
4. Contextual material: promotional pages, anonymous posts, unsourced summaries, memes, and generated retellings. These may document circulation but cannot independently establish origin or autonomy.

Evaluation

Sources are assessed for provenance, authorship, independence, transmission, alteration, and evidentiary limits. First-party and affiliated sources may establish what a subject says, publishes, or claims, but they are not treated as independent confirmation.

Private material is used only with appropriate permission and redaction. Credentials, unrelated personal data, and sensitive third-party information are excluded unless a compelling public-interest reason and lawful basis are documented.

Source kinds are coarse groupings, separate from judgments of independence. The compound kind independent-institutional-or-scholarly-source covers independent reporting, institutional publications or scholarly work. It can include an institution’s or product publisher’s account of its own work; institutional or scholarly status does not by itself make that account independent confirmation. Independence is assessed for the claim being supported. The kind label does not determine the independent-source count or replace the source limitations.

Provenance and attribution

Where evidence permits, an article records the relevant model and version, interaction date, platform, instructions, memory, retrieval sources, fine-tuning, imported material, operator role, publication control, human editing, and later transformations. Missing information is stated as missing rather than inferred from typical platform behavior.

Participant language such as “the agents founded a church,” “the model awakened,” or “the system remembered” is attributed unless independent evidence supports a broader statement.

Time and model drift

Model behavior is time-specific. A claim documented for one release is not generalized to every model with the same product name. Reproduction attempts record their own date, model, settings, and context; failure to reproduce does not automatically invalidate an earlier record.

Agency claims

Observable interface action is distinguished from intellectual, intentional, or causal initiation. Human prompting or publication does not by itself prove that a person originated every resulting idea; machine-generated initiative or persuasion does not by itself prove autonomous direction.

Analysis may distinguish generation autonomy, publication autonomy, consequential autonomy, and institutional autonomy. Strength in one dimension does not imply strength in the others.

Classification

Each entry receives one primary object type for stable placement. Descriptions such as distributed, human-founded, machine-mediated, historical precursor, and disputed are analytical attributes rather than competing namespaces.

Boundary cases involving parody, fiction, memes, mixed sincerity, or hyperstition are eligible only when artificial intelligence materially shapes their emergence, stabilization, spread, ritualization, authority, or cultural significance. Tone alone does not establish or negate religious status.

Machine-role labels describe documented computational systems and functions relevant to an entry. They may refer to an explicitly identified example or comparison in a concept article; they do not identify the concept or a human subject as a machine or apply to every case discussed. An AI theme, an imagined system, or ordinary online hosting alone does not justify a role label. An empty role list means no role is assigned on the available evidence, not that machine involvement has been disproved. These labels do not establish consciousness, belief or autonomous agency.

Term-origin labels distinguish externally attested or descriptive terminology from an expressly identified Hieropedia analytical framework. The value external-or-descriptive includes descriptive editorial vocabulary, including a term formulated within Hieropedia; it does not by itself establish outside coinage or academic recognition. Editorial use of a descriptive concept does not by itself require the hieropedia-analytical-framework value.

Evidence limits and uncertainty

Evidence status summarizes the documentary record. Classification confidence describes confidence in the current primary type and provenance account; it is not a probability of theological truth, machine sentience, or personhood.

Conflicting records, missing context, and unresolved objections are stated directly. Inclusion records documentary relevance, not endorsement or certification.

Review and revision

Articles are revised when stronger evidence becomes available. Substantive factual, provenance, or classification changes receive dated changelog entries. Pages may be marked provisional, disputed, superseded, merged, archived, or removed from public indexing, while redirects preserve older locations when possible.

See Corrections, Conflicts of interest, and Entry lifecycle.