Glossary¶
The words this documentation, the interface, the API and the refusals use, each in exactly one
sense. Where a term has near-synonyms in everyday speech, the entry says which words are not used
for it, so a search for the wrong word still lands on the right one. The same list, in
GLOSSARY.md at the root of the repository, is what the living features are checked against, so a
term changes there first.
People¶
citizen. A person who takes part in Voice without saying who they are: converses, confirms, shares, explores, follows, withdraws. The same person as a participant, seen from outside Voice. Not called user, member.
participant. A citizen as Voice knows them: a pseudonymous identity with a recovery credential and their own records, and nothing that says who they are. Not called user, account holder.
visitor. Someone who has opened Voice and has no session yet.
representative. An elected representative or the staff they authorise, with the role to open investigations and record actions, decisions, outcomes and updates. Not called MP, staff member.
reviewer. The person who decides whether a shared derivative may enter the shared space, and who accepts or rejects evidence. Not called moderator.
operator. The person who runs the pilot: provisions roles, verifies erasure requests and reads receipts. Not entitled to read private content. Not called administrator, admin.
reader. Anyone reading public records, with or without a session.
person. Any of the above when the role is given beside the word.
role. What a person may do: "citizen", "representative", "reviewer" or "operator".
research agent. The model-driven component that suggests sources, questions and investigations to a representative. It decides nothing. Not called bot, assistant.
Voice. The system, when it acts: asks, proposes, explains, abstains, prepares an update.
Identity and session¶
session. A participant's current period of use, started with an invite code and resumed with the recovery credential.
invite code. The pilot's admission code, shared with the test cohort. It says nothing about who a person is.
recovery credential. The one secret that lets a participant return to their records. Shown once; Voice keeps only a hash of it. Not called password, login.
identity. Who a person is in the world: a name, an email, a verified attribute. Voice asks a citizen for none of it.
privacy notice. The plain-words explanation of what Voice keeps, shares and erases, shown before a participant's first message.
AI notice. The plain-words statement that the participant is talking to a model, shown before the first message.
Conversation and concern¶
conversation. One participant's private exchange with Voice: their messages and Voice's replies. Not called chat, thread.
message. One thing a participant or Voice says in a conversation.
concern. Something a participant has confirmed they experience or value, in their own meaning. A statement by a person, not a fact about the world. Not called complaint, issue (for this).
proposal. Voice's structured reading of a concern, offered to the participant to edit or confirm: a summary, its elements, the passage each came from, a confidence and suggested related issues. Not called extraction, interpretation, concern card.
structured concern. The content of a proposal: the same thing seen as data rather than as an offer.
summary. The one-paragraph reading of a concern in a proposal, which the participant may edit.
element. One extracted part of a proposal: what the problem is, who, where, when, the impact, the wish.
passage. The exact words a thing came from: in a proposal, the participant's words; in evidence, the source's words. Not called span, excerpt, quote.
confidence. How sure Voice says it is of a proposal: low, medium or high.
confirms. Of a participant and a proposal: accepts it as their meaning, making it a concern. Not called approves (for this), accepts (for this).
clarifying question. A question Voice asks to understand a concern better. It proposes no position, cause or culprit.
original. The participant's own words as first said: the original statement of a concern. It is private and never shared. Not called raw text, source text.
Disclosure¶
contribution. A statement a participant has approved for a sharing mode, with its derivative, its review and its association with an issue. Not called submission, post.
derivative. The text of a contribution as the participant approved it for sharing, apart from the original. Not called shareable summary, redacted copy.
sharing mode. How far a contribution may go: "private", "de-identified", "representative only" or "publicly attributed". Not called visibility, privacy level.
audience. Who a sharing mode lets see a derivative: the reviewer alone, the representative, or the public.
approves. Of a participant and a derivative: accepts the exact text and audience for sharing. Of a reviewer and a derivative: lets it enter the shared space.
submits. Of a participant and an approved derivative: sends it to review.
review. The reviewer's check of a derivative for privacy and re-identification risk before it is seen by its audience.
under moderation. The state of a contribution between submission and the reviewer's decision.
rejects. Of a reviewer and a derivative: refuses it with a reason; nothing is published.
rejection. The reviewer's refusal of a derivative, with its reason.
flagged. Of a derivative: marked for enhanced review because it describes a distinctive circumstance, a health detail, a minor or a very small group.
enhanced review. A review that needs a second recorded step before a flagged derivative may be public.
published. Of a derivative: shown on its issue to its audience after the reviewer approved it.
disclosure. The participant's grant of a sharing mode for one contribution. It may be withdrawn. Not called consent (alone), permission.
withdraws. Of a participant: takes back a disclosure, a priority or a trade-off, so it is no longer shown or counted. Not called deletes, retracts.
withdrawal. The fact that a disclosure was withdrawn, recorded without the withdrawn text.
identifying detail. A word or combination in a derivative that could reasonably point to a person.
private field. Any value Voice holds that is personal to one participant, including the original, a derivative before publication, contact details and the links from a public copy to its author.
participant identifier. The pseudonymous key Voice uses for a participant. Personal data; never public.
de-identified. Of a derivative: with every identifying detail removed, so it can be public without pointing to its author. One of the four sharing modes. Not called anonymised (for a derivative).
participant-derived. Of a measure: counted from the participants who took part, and labelled so; never a claim about the population.
distinctive circumstance. A described situation rare enough that it could identify the person it happened to.
Issues¶
issue. A public topic that gathers approved contributions, questions, evidence, options, investigations, actions, decisions, outcomes and a chronology. Not called topic, case, campaign.
public issue. An issue anyone may read. In this feature every issue is public once opened.
shared issue. An issue seen from a contribution: the place an approved derivative goes.
suggested issue. An issue Voice proposes a contribution may join.
association. The recorded link between a contribution and an issue, kept apart from the original and changeable under review. Not called link (for this), attachment.
chronology. An issue's ordered record of what happened, each entry with one state label and its actor. Not called timeline, history.
state label. One of the seven words an entry or a statement about progress carries: "submitted", "AI-interpreted", "under moderation", "staff-acknowledged", "under investigation", "action recorded", "outcome verified".
participant count. How many distinct participants have published contributions on an issue.
development. An authoritative change to an issue that followers may be told about: an action, a decision, an outcome, accepted evidence, a published update.
typographical correction. A change to an issue's text that changes no fact: not a development worth an update.
public search. Keyword search over public issues, sources and options, open to anyone.
snippet. The fragment of public text a search result shows.
record identifier. The stable id of a record, by which a link reaches it.
Evidence and reasoning¶
reasoning service. The sibling service that holds questions, hypotheses, sources, evidence and claims as records that are never edited.
question. A question an issue raises, held by the reasoning service with the hypotheses that compete to answer it.
claim. A proposition whose support can be inspected: derived from evidence, taking a stance on a hypothesis.
evidence. Source-anchored information with provenance: a source, a passage, a date, and in Voice a scope, an authority and limitations.
source. Where evidence comes from: a report, a dataset, a document, with its name, licence and date.
provenance. Where a record came from and when: its source, passage, date and authority.
authority. Of evidence: who stands behind the source. Of an action: the office or mandate under which it was taken.
scope. What a piece of evidence covers: the place, period and population it speaks to.
limitations. What a piece of evidence, an outcome or an aggregate cannot tell.
superseded. The state of accepted evidence whose source has published a correction: kept, shown as superseded, and no longer supporting anything on its own. Not called replaced, deleted.
correction. A later publication by the same source that changes or withdraws what earlier evidence said.
review prompt. What Voice raises for the reviewer when evidence is accepted or superseded: the claims and decisions that derive from that evidence, to be looked at again. A prompt changes no claim. Not called alert, flag (as a noun).
candidate. The state of evidence proposed and not yet accepted or rejected by the reviewer.
accepted. Of evidence: taken into the issue's record by the reviewer. Not called approved (for evidence).
contradicts. Of evidence or a claim: takes the opposite stance on the same hypothesis.
abstains. Voice says the records do not support an answer, and cites nothing. Not called declines, refuses to answer.
explained. Of a claim: shown with its source, passage, date and authority, and what contradicts it.
document. A file or page proposed as evidence.
Deliberation¶
option. A described possible intervention on an issue, with costs, benefits and open questions, and no endorsement. Not called policy, proposal (for this), recommendation.
priority. A participant's statement of how much an issue matters to them. An opinion. Not called vote, score.
trade-off. A participant's statement of what cost they would accept for what benefit. An opinion.
consideration. A participant's note for or against an option. An opinion. Not called comment, argument.
opinion. A statement by a person about what they value; never evidence of what is true. Not called preference.
aggregate. A count or summary over many participants' opinions, always labelled with its sample. Not called statistic, poll.
cell. One group within an aggregate.
suppressed. Of a cell: not shown, because too few participants are in it.
suppression threshold. The fewest participants a cell may hold and still be shown.
caveat. The statement beside an aggregate that its participants chose themselves and are not the population.
measure. One number a representative's view shows about an issue, labelled participant-derived.
concerns dashboard. The representative's view of an issue's participant-derived measures.
self-selected. Of a sample: made of whoever chose to take part.
endorsed. Of an option: recommended. No option ever is.
Investigation and action¶
investigation. A persistent question a representative pursues on an issue, with tasks and evidence requests. Not called inquiry, case.
suggested. The state of an investigation the research agent proposed and no representative has opened.
open. Of an investigation: approved and begun by a representative.
action. A step a representative has recorded taking, with authority, owner, date, rationale, state and a public summary. Not called measure (for this), intervention.
decision. A chosen approach a representative has recorded, with its authority, alternatives and justification.
outcome. An observed effect recorded against an action, with what was measured and its limitations. Not called impact.
proposed. The state of an action that is intended and not yet taken.
completed. The state of an action that has been taken.
performed. Of an action: shown as having been taken.
work queue. The representative's list of what waits: new issues, pending reviews, open review prompts, investigations, investigation tasks awaiting an external party.
follow-up. A thing owed by someone outside Voice that the representative is waiting on.
unanswered. Of an open item: with no response from the representative, and shown as such.
public summary. The words about an action that everyone may read.
rationale. Why an action was taken, as the representative recorded it.
owner. Who is responsible for an action.
refused. Not accepted: the person is told which rule was broken and nothing changes. Not called rejected (for this), denied.
logged. Recorded in the access or refusal log the operator reads.
Feedback¶
follows. Of a participant and an issue: chooses to be told of its developments. Not called subscribes, watches.
interest. The record that a participant follows an issue, with their delivery choice. Not called subscription.
follower. A participant with an active interest in an issue.
update. The message a follower receives about one development, saying what happened, why it reached them, and linking its records. Not called notification (in steps), alert.
inbox. Where a participant's updates wait, inside Voice.
delivery. How updates reach a follower: in this feature, the inbox, immediately. Recorded apart from following so a later channel changes nothing a follower chose.
immediate. Delivery as each development is processed.
processed. Of a development: Voice has decided who is eligible and prepared their updates.
prepared. Of an update: written for one follower and not yet delivered.
delivered. Of an update: in the follower's inbox.
eligible. Of a follower and a development: has an active interest in the issue, so may be told.
Erasure¶
erasure. The removal of a participant's personal data: protected fields made unreadable, private records removed, the public issue left standing. Not called deletion, shredding, crypto-shredding.
erasure request. A participant's request for erasure, verified before anything is erased.
verified. Of an erasure request: confirmed to come from the participant it names.
protected field. A personal value Voice can make unreadable by destroying the participant's key. Not called encrypted field, sheddable field.
unreadable. Of a protected field: cannot be read by anyone, including Voice, after erasure.
erased. Of content: made unreadable or removed by an erasure.
retained. Kept after erasure, because it is anonymous and lawful to keep.
receipt. The restricted record that an erasure completed: what classes were erased, when, who authorised it, that completion was verified, and none of the content. Not called certificate.
dormancy. The state of a participant whose last session ended longer ago than the dormancy period. A dormant participant is erased without a request, with the cause "dormancy". Not called inactivity, abandonment (in steps).
dormancy period. How long since a participant's last session before they are dormant: 180 days unless the operator sets otherwise.
cause. Why an erasure happened: "requested" by the participant, or "dormancy". Carried by every retained de-identified contribution whose author was erased.
residue. Anything left after erasure that could reasonably identify the participant.
snapshot. A saved point of a record's state that Voice may restore from.
restore. Bringing records back from a snapshot or backup.
rebuilt. Of views and the search index: emptied and filled again from the records.
redacted or unavailable. How an erased field is shown.