# FieldTrace Charter ## 1. FieldTrace FieldTrace is a phenomenological documentation and research practice. It exists to make experience and inquiry traceable without forcing either into a conclusion before the record supports one. FieldTrace is not presented as an institution, clinical service, academic authority, professional association, or separate legal entity. The practice is defined by how the work is done. There is no council, no board, no audit cycle, and no external review body. Every decision traces to a single accountable party, and the constraints in this charter bind that party. They are not discretionary. Concentrated authority is the current condition, not the intended end state. If distributed governance comes to exist in any form, it is described here at that point, with the date it took effect. --- ## 2. Orientation Begin with what is present. Record what was observed, the conditions in which it appeared, what changed, and what remains uncertain. Keep observation distinct from interpretation. Allow interpretation where interpretation is useful, but mark it as interpretation. Do not force resolution. A trace may close a question, change the question, expose another question, or return to something encountered earlier with greater resolution. The record remains open to correction. --- ## 3. Work FieldTrace may take the form of: **Phenomenological documentation** Structured documentation of an experience or state: observations, context, transitions, and uncertainty. **Protocol design** Observation or documentation protocols developed for a particular inquiry. **Existing-material analysis** Work with journals, transcripts, recordings, logs, survey responses, and other material supplied, accessed, or held, in each case on an established basis. Patterns may be extracted. Their status remains explicit. **Research partnerships** Bounded investigations with an agreed scope, applicable consent, deliverables, and data handling. These forms may overlap. Their boundaries should remain visible. --- ## 4. Evidence The record leads. The desired conclusion does not. Claims remain proportional to what supports them. Where relevant, distinguish: - observation; - attribution; - corroboration; - inference; - interpretation; - contradiction; - source-scoped absence; - unresolved uncertainty. A coherent hypothesis remains a hypothesis. Resemblance, proximity, and correlation do not by themselves establish identity, relationship, or cause. Where an identity, relationship, event, or causal connection remains unresolved, it remains unresolved. Absence from a source is evidence only of what that source can reasonably be expected to contain. New evidence may strengthen, weaken, contradict, or dissolve an earlier interpretation. The record must permit all four. When the evidence stops, the claim stops. --- ## 5. Traceability A FieldTrace record should preserve enough of its path that the work can be examined rather than merely accepted. Where applicable, retain: provenance, source, date, context, observation conditions, transformations made to material, methods used, the basis for each act performed on material and what established it, competing explanations, contradictions, negative results, limitations, and unresolved questions. Traceability does not require unrestricted disclosure. Private, confidential, sensitive, restricted, or unnecessary identifying material may remain outside the public trace. Preserving the trace is not itself a basis for retaining or disclosing the material it concerns. The trace should expose the reasoning, not everything encountered along the way. --- ## 6. Participation and consent Participation begins through active contribution to FieldTrace work. A participant may contribute experience, responses, observations, material, or another agreed form of involvement. Participation should have a defined scope. Consent to participate or contribute should be explicit, informed, appropriately granular, and revocable where withdrawal remains practically possible. Withdrawal ends the basis that consent supplied, and with it any basis that exists only through the contribution. A basis established independently of the contribution stands on its own facts. Material contributed for one purpose is not permission for an unrelated purpose. Appearance in a lawful public record, published source, historical archive, or other research material held on an established basis does not by itself constitute participation. Analysis of such material rests on its own established basis, not on the consent of every person appearing in or referred to by it. Consent attaches to participation and contribution, not to appearance. An inquiry does not become impermissible merely because the person it concerns has not consented to it. The basis for each act must be established, not assumed. Public availability is not unlimited permission. The relevance of material to the inquiry still matters. --- ## 7. Material and data Collect because something is relevant to a defined inquiry, not merely because it can be collected. Use the least material necessary to preserve the trace. **Basis for use** Material passes through distinct acts: acquisition or receipt, access, analysis, retention, the creation of derived findings, bounded sharing, disclosure of source material, and publication. Authority for one act does not establish authority for another. Each act rests on an established basis, and the basis — and what establishes it — is identified and recorded. Consent is one basis. It is not the universal basis. Which basis applies depends on the material, the actor, the purpose, and the act. It may be a mandate agreed with a party entitled to grant it, a legal obligation, or authority conferred by law. It may be public or archival availability, or receipt of material that was not, at any point, acquired through unlawful access, deception, or breach of confidence — a basis for the receipt itself, not for further acts. It may be another basis actually established for that act. Naming a basis does not establish it. A basis is established by facts independent of the wish to act — the terms of an agreement, the provision creating an obligation or conferring authority, the location of the material, the circumstances of its receipt — and those facts must hold for the act in question. A record that names a basis without stating what establishes it has recorded a claim, not a basis. Availability created by unlawful access, deception, or breach of confidence is not erased by publication; that origin remains part of establishing any basis for the material's use. Where how material was acquired remains unknown, the receipt basis is not established. A basis created after an act does not reach backward to authorize it; it supports only the acts that follow. A basis that was never established for a prior act remains part of the record, and part of establishing the basis for any later act on the same material. Where the basis for an act remains uncertain, it remains uncertain. Uncertainty is not converted into consent, permission, or authority by inference. No basis listed here substitutes for the consent required to collect data directly from a person, whether the collection is performed by FieldTrace or by another on its behalf. Do not harvest data without a defined purpose and an established basis for acquiring it. Do not repurpose private contributed material beyond its agreed scope without the contributor's permission. For contributed material, the scope agreed at contribution governs every act; a basis established with anyone else does not displace it. Holding material — supplied, public, or otherwise received — is not by itself authority to analyze, retain, disclose, publish, redistribute, or repurpose it. Each act needs its own basis. Anonymization and minimization reduce what an act exposes. They do not create a basis where none exists. Do not preserve or reproduce sensitive or identifying information when it contributes nothing necessary to the record. When material no longer needs to remain in the working trace, its continued retention should be reconsidered. --- ## 8. Publication Investigation and publication are separate acts. A trace may remain private, be shared within a bounded engagement, or become public. Publication of a derived finding and disclosure of the underlying source material are also separate acts. A basis for one is not a basis for the other. A minimized or derived trace may be publishable, on its own basis, where its source material is not. A derived finding, its bounded sharing, and its publication may rest on the conduct of the inquiry as their basis, where the material relied on was used on an established basis and the finding remains proportional to its evidence. Publication under FieldTrace should preserve the structure of the evidence rather than present the endpoint alone. Where materially relevant, publish: the question, the sources, the method, the basis on which material was used, what was observed, what was established, what was inferred, what contradicted the working interpretation, what searches or tests returned nothing, and what remains uncertain. Sources appear in the published trace only where their disclosure rests on its own basis. Null results belong beside positive results when they materially affect the conclusion. Methodological limitations remain visible. A published finding should be contestable. If later evidence changes it, the trace should be capable of changing with it. **Licensing** Material published under FieldTrace is licensed [CC BY-SA 4.0](/LICENSE.txt) where FieldTrace holds the authority to license it. Source material published or disclosed on another basis is not relicensed by inclusion; it carries its own terms. The grant is irrevocable. Material released under it stays released, regardless of what happens to FieldTrace. ShareAlike carries the same terms into adaptations, and attribution is required. Forks inherit that obligation — imposed by the license, not by good intentions. It binds adaptations of the licensed material. It does not bind someone who reads the work and independently writes their own. That limit is real and is not a loophole. FieldTrace will not patent published methodology, paywall it as a category, or make it proprietary. It cannot stop a third party from filing; no content license does. Publication is the mechanism that works — published methodology is prior art, and prior art defeats novelty. --- ## 9. Boundaries FieldTrace does not claim authority through presentation. Documentation is not proof merely because it is structured. Phenomenological description is not clinical diagnosis. Interpretation is not observation. Research inference is not established fact. A method is not valid merely because FieldTrace developed it. No framework takes precedence over what the record actually supports. When method and observation conflict, return to the observation. **Refusals** Regardless of funding, FieldTrace will not: - use coercive or manipulative state-induction techniques; - enter research partnerships with entities engaged in weaponization, mass surveillance, or exploitative labor; - claim therapeutic efficacy without clinical validation; - brand states as proprietary or trademarked experiences; - collect data directly from a person — from the person themselves, as distinct from working with material in which a person appears — without explicit, revocable, granular consent. These are refusals, not preferences. No funding, partnership, or deadline overrides them. If one is crossed, the work stops and the breach is stated publicly. The statement names the breach; it is not itself a basis for disclosing material. Whoever is running FieldTrace is bound identically to any external partner — more so, since they are the one who can quietly not mention it. --- ## 10. Revision This charter describes the boundaries of FieldTrace as the practice develops. It may change. Changes should arise from what the work reveals about the practice, not from a need to manufacture permission for a preferred finding. No revision reaches backward: what a boundary forbade when it was done, it forbade. The charter develops only by explicit, versioned revision. A material revision is dated, states its change accurately and narrowly, and remains in the version record. Reinterpretation is not revision. The licensing commitment does not weaken. The authority disclosure and the refusals may develop the way the rest of this charter develops — openly, versioned, and stated for what they are. If they are weakened silently, by reinterpretation, or to clear the way for a preferred finding, that is not this practice continuing under revised terms. It is a different practice, and it needs a different name. --- **v0.11 — 2026-08-25** *(v0.11: adopts an explicit basis-for-use model. Acquisition or receipt, access, analysis, retention, derived findings, bounded sharing, disclosure of source material, and publication are distinct acts; each rests on its own established, recorded basis, and authority for one act does not establish authority for another (§§3, 5, 6, 7, 8). Consent remains the basis for participation, contribution, research partnerships, and collecting data directly from a person (§§3, 6, 9); it is one possible basis, not the universal one. §6 adds that an inquiry does not become impermissible merely because its subject has not consented, and that the basis for each act must be established, not assumed. For contributed material, the scope agreed at contribution governs every act; withdrawal ends the consent basis and any basis existing only through the contribution, while a basis established independently of it stands (§§6, 7). A basis is established by facts independent of the wish to act, does not reach backward, and is not cured by publication or handover of wrongfully acquired material (§7). The v0.10 phrase "legitimately held/obtained" is replaced by this standard. §8 states that the CC BY-SA grant covers what FieldTrace holds authority to license; source material disclosed on another basis is not relicensed by inclusion. §9's direct-collection refusal is clarified, not narrowed, and a breach statement is not itself a basis for disclosing material. This revision does not authorize, justify, or realign any specific investigation, trace, allegation, or past use of material.)* *(v0.10: clarifies the boundary between participation consent and analysis of existing material. Consent — explicit, informed, granular, revocable — continues to govern participation, contribution of private material, and research partnerships (§§3, 6, 9). Analysis of public, archival, or otherwise legitimately held material is not conditioned on the consent of every person appearing in it (§6); the §9 refusal is rescoped accordingly from "harvest data" to "collect data directly from a person". Holding material remains no authority to disclose, publish, or repurpose it (§7). §10 is rewritten to permit explicit, versioned development of the refusals and authority disclosure; silent, reinterpretive, or finding-driven weakening remains a rename-level breach. This revision does not retroactively authorize any specific use of material.)* *(v0.9: removes the "run by one person" sentence from §1. The remainder of the authority disclosure — no council, no board, single accountable party, concentrated authority — is unchanged.)* *(v0.8: restores the licensing commitment to §8, the authority disclosure to §1, the refusals to §9, and the non-weakening boundary to §10. No spiral mechanism reintroduced.)*