System Scope Definition

batch: First Iteration/Batch 04

related_primes: boundary_critique holism constraint

Boundary

slug: boundary

role: The archetype uses boundary as the core primitive: it makes explicit what is inside, outside, adjacent to, and crossing the system-of-interest.

Set and Membership

role: The archetype depends on membership criteria: elements, actors, data, responsibilities, or cases are included or excluded for a stated purpose.

Representation

role: The system boundary must be represented in documents, diagrams, criteria, maps, or operating agreements that people can use.

Boundary Critique

role: Boundary critique helps review whether the chosen scope hides stakeholders, causes, harms, or responsibilities.

Holism

slug: holism

role: Holism matters when the selected system-of-interest must preserve whole-system behavior rather than merely naming parts.

Constraint

slug: constraint

role: Scope boundaries often become constraints on action, measurement, accountability, or analysis.

components:
Boundary Statement
Inclusion Criteria
Exclusion Criteria
Interface Identification
Measurement Scope
Responsibility Map
Scope Review
Adjacent Context Register
Assumption Boundary
Exception or Escalation Path

mechanisms:
System-of-Interest Definition
Project Scope Statement
Model Boundary Definition
Jurisdictional Scope
Service Boundary Definition
Research Inclusion/Exclusion Criteria
Operational Responsibility Map

essence_one_line: Define the system-of-interest boundary so analysis, responsibility, measurement, and intervention target the right whole.

compression_statement: When action or analysis is confused because the system boundary is implicit, contested, or drifting, define the system of interest to preserve focus, accountability, and intervention fit at the cost of excluding some context.

core_intuition: A system can only be diagnosed, measured, governed, or changed coherently after the working boundary is explicit. Scope definition does not claim that excluded context is irrelevant; it says which whole is being treated as the object of analysis or action right now, and which adjacent factors must be handled through interfaces, assumptions, or later review.

canonical_formula: system_of_interest = included_elements + included_relations + boundary_interfaces + stated_exclusions + review_conditions

structural_problem: A problem, project, model, or intervention lacks a clear boundary, causing unclear responsibility, inconsistent measurement, scope creep, contested assumptions, or misdirected action.

trigger_conditions: Different actors use different implicit definitions of the system they are discussing.

trigger_conditions: Responsibilities, measurements, or intervention targets are ambiguous because no one has stated what is inside the system-of-interest.

trigger_conditions: Work expands through adjacent requests, exceptions, or dependencies without a conscious scope decision.

trigger_conditions: A model, policy, project, or service is being judged by outcomes that it may not actually own.

trigger_conditions: A boundary has to be made explicit before another intervention can be chosen.

symptoms: Meetings repeatedly return to “what are we actually solving?” or “who owns this?”

symptoms: Metrics disagree because they count different populations, cases, or responsibilities.

symptoms: Interfaces and handoffs are treated as someone else’s problem until failures occur.

symptoms: Analysis alternates between too narrow to explain the issue and too broad to act on.

symptoms: Stakeholders smuggle excluded work, costs, or decisions into the initiative after commitment.

root_tension: The useful boundary for action is neither the whole universe nor an arbitrary local box. The tension is between tractable focus and enough contextual inclusion to make the intervention meaningful.

anti_signatures: The boundary is already clear and the real problem is that harmful flows across it need filtering; use Boundary Permeability Control instead.

anti_signatures: The key need is to redraw a known boundary to expose hidden causes or stakeholders; use Boundary Reframing instead.

anti_signatures: The task is merely to classify items into an existing category without defining a system-of-interest; use classification or membership refinement patterns instead.

anti_signatures: The problem is the allowable operating range inside an already scoped system; use Constraint Envelope Adjustment instead.

anti_signatures: The intervention requires partitioning independent failure domains; use Bulkhead Isolation rather than general scope definition.

structural_intervention: Explicitly define what is inside, outside, adjacent to, and crossing the system boundary, then connect that boundary to responsibility, measurement, interfaces, and review.

action_logic: State the purpose of the scope decision: analysis, responsibility, measurement, intervention, governance, or experimentation.

action_logic: Name the system-of-interest and state the boundary in language that participants can apply.

action_logic: Specify inclusion criteria for elements, actors, resources, data, relationships, responsibilities, or cases that belong inside the boundary.

action_logic: Specify exclusion criteria and explain whether excluded items are irrelevant, deferred, external context, separate responsibilities, or known limitations.

action_logic: Identify boundary interfaces where information, materials, actors, decisions, costs, risks, or accountability cross between inside and outside.

action_logic: Attach the boundary to measurement and responsibility so success, failure, ownership, and handoffs do not drift.

action_logic: Create a review condition or cadence for changing the scope when evidence, purpose, or operating context changes.

decision_rules: Include an element when excluding it would materially change the diagnosis, responsibility assignment, measurement, or intervention design.

decision_rules: Exclude an element when including it would add complexity without improving the decision the scope is meant to support.

decision_rules: Represent adjacent but excluded elements as context, assumptions, dependencies, or interfaces rather than silently ignoring them.

decision_rules: Escalate to Boundary Reframing when the current boundary hides material stakeholders, externalities, or causes.

decision_rules: Review the scope when metrics no longer match lived responsibility, when dependencies dominate outcomes, or when excluded effects become material.

target_invariants: The scope boundary remains explicit, inspectable, and tied to a stated purpose.

target_invariants: Included and excluded elements are justified rather than left as tacit assumptions.

target_invariants: Interfaces with adjacent systems remain visible, even when adjacent systems are out of scope.

target_invariants: Responsibility and measurement align with the declared boundary.

target_invariants: The boundary can be reviewed without making every scope disagreement a full restart.

expected_outcomes: Clearer responsibility for action, measurement, and handoffs.

expected_outcomes: Reduced scope creep and fewer implicit commitments.

expected_outcomes: More coherent analysis because participants reason about the same system-of-interest.

expected_outcomes: Better intervention fit because the targeted system is neither too broad nor too narrow for the intended action.

expected_outcomes: More transparent limitations, assumptions, and adjacent dependencies.

prose_essence:
System Scope Definition is the intervention of making the working system-of-interest explicit. It answers a practical question before analysis or action begins: **what whole are we treating as the object of attention, responsibility, measurement, and change?**

The archetype is not the prime abstraction **Boundary** itself. Boundary is the underlying primitive. System Scope Definition is the usable intervention: state the boundary, justify what is included and excluded, identify interfaces with adjacent systems, and attach the scope to responsibility, measurement, and review.

Its value is discipline. Without a defined system-of-interest, people may appear to be discussing the same problem while silently referring to different wholes. One person may mean the service, another the organization, another the customer journey, another the regulatory jurisdiction, and another the entire ecosystem. Scope definition makes the working whole inspectable.

prose_when_to_use:
Use this archetype when confusion comes from an implicit, contested, or drifting system boundary. Typical signs include scope creep, unclear ownership, incompatible metrics, repeated disagreement about what problem is being solved, and interventions aimed at the wrong level.

It is especially useful before project planning, model building, research design, responsibility assignment, system mapping, policy design, service ownership, or operational improvement. In all of those cases, the boundary determines what counts as evidence, who owns action, which interfaces matter, and which outcomes can fairly be attributed to the system.

Do not use it as a way to freeze a convenient boundary forever. A scope definition is a controlled working commitment, not a claim that excluded context is irrelevant.

prose_structural_problem:
The structural problem is **scope ambiguity**. A system is being discussed, measured, governed, modeled, or changed, but its boundary is not explicit enough to support coordinated action.

This ambiguity causes several recurring failures. Responsibility is diffuse because no one knows which part of the world the actor owns. Measurement is inconsistent because different people count different populations or time horizons. Analysis is unstable because causes move in and out of view. Work expands because adjacent requests are never consciously admitted or rejected. Interfaces fail because handoffs to adjacent systems were not named.

The root tension is between focus and completeness. A useful scope must be narrow enough to support action and broad enough to preserve the relevant whole.

prose_intervention_logic:
The intervention begins by naming the purpose of the scope decision. A system boundary for research validity may differ from a system boundary for operational ownership or public accountability. Purpose determines what must be inside.

Next, define the system-of-interest. State the boundary in terms that participants can apply. Then specify inclusion criteria and exclusion criteria. This is the difference between “we are focusing on customer onboarding” and “we include account creation, identity verification, first payment, support handoff, and the first seven days of account use; we exclude later retention work but track it as an adjacent dependency.”

The intervention should also identify interfaces. A scoped system is not a sealed box. Inputs, outputs, handoffs, information flows, costs, risks, and accountability may cross the boundary. Those crossings need names even when adjacent systems remain outside scope.

Finally, connect the boundary to measurement, responsibility, and review. The scope should say what success means, who owns what, what is merely adjacent, and when the boundary should be reopened.

prose_key_components:
### Boundary Statement

The boundary statement names the system-of-interest and states the working line between inside, outside, adjacent context, and interface. It is the anchor that turns a vague topic into a scoped object of analysis or action.

### Inclusion Criteria

Inclusion criteria define what belongs inside the scope: elements, actors, data, cases, responsibilities, resources, relationships, or outcomes. They prevent accidental narrowing and make the boundary testable.

### Exclusion Criteria

Exclusion criteria state what is outside the scope and why. Exclusions may be deferred, delegated, treated as context, represented as assumptions, or ruled irrelevant for a specific decision. Making exclusions explicit prevents hidden assumptions from masquerading as neutrality.

### Interface Identification

Interface identification names the crossings between the system-of-interest and adjacent systems. These may be handoffs, dependencies, inputs, outputs, information flows, risks, costs, or responsibilities. This component keeps scope definition from becoming blind isolation.

### Measurement Scope

Measurement scope connects the boundary to what will be counted, evaluated, attributed, or reported. It prevents mismatches where a system is defined one way but judged using indicators that cover a different population, time horizon, or responsibility boundary.

### Responsibility Map

A responsibility map assigns ownership, authority, handoffs, and escalation paths for the included system and its interfaces. It is most important when multiple teams, agencies, jurisdictions, or service owners touch the boundary.

### Scope Review

Scope review defines when the boundary can be revisited. Without review, scope can become brittle and obsolete. With uncontrolled review, scope can dissolve into constant renegotiation. The component preserves adaptive discipline.

prose_common_mechanisms:
### System-of-Interest Definition

This is a systems-engineering or systems-thinking method for naming the system being analyzed, its environment, and its interfaces. It implements the archetype by turning a broad situation into a declared object of attention.

### Project Scope Statement

A project scope statement records included work, excluded work, deliverables, assumptions, dependencies, and acceptance criteria. It is an implementation document, not the archetype itself. The archetype is the transferable move of defining the system boundary for coordinated action.

### Model Boundary Definition

A model boundary definition states what a model represents, what it omits, and where its outputs are valid. It implements scope definition in representational contexts such as simulation, forecasting, machine learning, or scientific modeling.

### Jurisdictional Scope

Jurisdictional scope defines the territory, authority, population, or matter over which an institution has responsibility. It is a governance mechanism for turning a scope boundary into legitimate authority and accountability.

### Service Boundary Definition

A service boundary definition specifies what a service owns, what it exposes, which dependencies it accepts, and where handoffs occur. It is common in software, platform operations, service design, and organizational operating models.

### Research Inclusion/Exclusion Criteria

Research inclusion and exclusion criteria implement the archetype by defining which participants, cases, evidence sources, time horizons, or observations are inside a study. They preserve validity by making the evidence boundary explicit.

### Operational Responsibility Map

An operational responsibility map connects the scope boundary to owners, handoffs, escalation paths, and decision rights. It is especially useful when failures otherwise fall between units.

prose_failure_modes:
**Scope creep by accretion** occurs when adjacent requests are added without revisiting the boundary. The mitigation is to require explicit inclusion decisions and maintain an escalation path.

**False closure** occurs when a boundary statement hides excluded causes, externalities, or stakeholders. The mitigation is boundary critique: ask who benefits from the boundary, who is excluded, and what would change if excluded effects were included.

**Metric-boundary mismatch** occurs when a system is defined one way but measured another way. The mitigation is to include measurement scope as a required component.

**Responsibility gaps** occur when interfaces and handoffs are not owned. The mitigation is a responsibility map that covers boundary crossings, not only internal elements.

**Overbroad paralysis** occurs when the system includes so much context that no actor can act. The mitigation is to narrow to the smallest system boundary that preserves decision relevance, while recording external context.

**Scope as responsibility avoidance** occurs when actors define harms or obligations as outside the system to avoid accountability. The mitigation is explicit exclusion review and, when needed, escalation to Boundary Reframing or Externality Internalization.

prose_neighbor_distinctions:
System Scope Definition is distinct from **Canonical Classification**. Classification sorts items into categories; System Scope Definition chooses the working whole for analysis, responsibility, measurement, or intervention.

It is distinct from **Membership Boundary Refinement**. Membership refinement clarifies who or what counts as a member of a category. System Scope Definition clarifies which system is being treated as the object of action.

It is distinct from **Constraint Envelope Adjustment**. Constraint envelope adjustment tunes allowable states or operating ranges inside an already scoped system. System Scope Definition decides what the system boundary is.

It is distinct from **Boundary Reframing**. Boundary Reframing changes an existing boundary to reveal different causes, responsibilities, risks, or solution options. System Scope Definition establishes or makes explicit the working boundary.

It is distinct from **Boundary Permeability Control**. Permeability control regulates what crosses a boundary. Scope definition identifies the boundary and its interfaces before crossing rules are designed.

It is distinct from **Bulkhead Isolation**. Bulkhead isolation partitions a system to contain failure. System Scope Definition may identify a boundary without creating isolated compartments.

prose_cross_domain_examples:
In **systems engineering**, a team designing a transit control system defines whether vehicles, stations, passengers, maintenance crews, ticketing, and traffic signals are inside the system-of-interest. The boundary determines safety requirements and interfaces.

In **public policy**, a city resilience plan defines whether private utilities, regional transport links, informal housing, and public health agencies are inside the planning boundary. The chosen scope changes responsibility and intervention fit.

In **research**, a clinical trial defines eligible participants, exclusion conditions, endpoints, and time horizons. The boundary determines what evidence the study can legitimately produce.

In **software operations**, a platform team defines the service boundary around an API, upstream dependencies, user-facing guarantees, monitoring obligations, and escalation handoffs. The boundary clarifies ownership and operational responsibility.

In **environmental planning**, a watershed plan defines whether upstream land use, stormwater infrastructure, agricultural runoff, and downstream ecosystems are inside the management boundary. The scope changes which causes and owners must be considered.

prose_non_examples:
A firewall rule that blocks traffic is not System Scope Definition. The system boundary is already known; the intervention controls permeability.

A taxonomy that sorts documents or organisms into categories is not System Scope Definition. The primary act is classification, not defining the working system-of-interest.

A slogan to “think holistically” is not System Scope Definition. Holism may motivate better scope, but the archetype requires explicit inclusion, exclusion, interfaces, responsibility, measurement, and review.

A team that expands its analysis after discovering hidden stakeholders is probably doing Boundary Reframing. System Scope Definition establishes the working boundary; Boundary Reframing changes a boundary to alter diagnosis or solution space.

prose_tradeoffs:
The main tradeoff is focus versus completeness. A clear boundary makes action possible, but it necessarily leaves something outside.

Another tradeoff is accountability versus flexibility. A defined scope makes ownership clearer, but it can become a shield against legitimate responsibility if treated too rigidly.

A third tradeoff is shared clarity versus negotiation cost. Boundary choices distribute work, authority, credit, and blame, so they are often politically or organizationally sensitive.

A fourth tradeoff is tractability versus boundary bias. The most convenient boundary may reflect power, habit, available data, or organizational charts rather than the most relevant system.

prose_invariants_to_preserve:
The boundary must remain explicit and connected to a purpose. A scope with no purpose becomes arbitrary.

Inclusion and exclusion must be justified. Even when the justification is “deferred for this decision,” it should be visible.

Interfaces must remain visible. A scoped system can be bounded without pretending it is independent.

Measurement and responsibility must align with the boundary. Otherwise the system will be judged or governed as something other than what it is.

The boundary must be reviewable. A scope definition is useful because it disciplines action, not because it is permanently true.

prose_target_outcomes:
A successful System Scope Definition produces shared clarity about the working whole. Participants know what is inside, what is outside, what is adjacent, and what crosses the boundary.

It should reduce scope creep by making expansion a conscious decision. It should improve accountability by tying responsibilities and handoffs to the boundary. It should improve measurement by making denominators, time horizons, and attribution rules more coherent. It should improve intervention fit by ensuring the action targets a system that is neither too narrow to matter nor too broad to govern.

It also creates a record of limitations. That record is valuable because it lets later reviewers ask whether exclusions still make sense.

prose_parameter_dimensions:
The first tuning dimension is **breadth**: how much of the surrounding world belongs inside the system-of-interest. Too narrow misses causes and responsibilities. Too broad prevents action.

The second is **boundary sharpness**. Some scopes need crisp membership criteria, such as clinical eligibility or jurisdictional authority. Others need fuzzy or tiered boundaries, such as stakeholder influence maps or ecosystem planning.

The third is **time horizon**. A system boundary may include immediate operations, lifecycle effects, downstream maintenance, or long-term impacts. Time horizon often changes responsibility and measurement.

The fourth is **interface detail**. Some scopes only need a few named handoffs. Others require detailed input-output maps, data lineage, escalation paths, or formal contracts.

The fifth is **review cadence**. A stable project may use milestone review. A live operational system may need continuous boundary monitoring. A research protocol may need formal amendment procedures.

The sixth is **authority level**. A scope can be descriptive, advisory, contractual, regulatory, or operationally binding. Stronger authority increases coordination but also raises the cost of boundary errors.

prose_variants_and_near_names:
**Project Scope Definition** applies the archetype to initiatives, deliverables, resources, and commitments. It is often implemented through a project scope statement or project charter.

**Model Scope Definition** applies it to representations. It clarifies what a model includes, what it omits, what assumptions hold, and where outputs should not be used.

**Responsibility Scope Definition** applies it to ownership, authority, handoffs, and escalation. It is useful when failures fall between teams, agencies, or roles.

**Research Scope Definition** applies it to populations, cases, evidence sources, variables, and time horizons. It is often implemented through inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Near names include system-of-interest definition, system boundary definition, project scope statement, model boundary definition, jurisdictional scope, service boundary definition, and operational responsibility map. These should usually point to the parent archetype or to variants rather than become separate top-level archetypes.

Project Scope Definition

short_definition: Defines the included work, excluded work, deliverables, actors, interfaces, and decision rights for a project or initiative.

distinctive_feature: The boundary is organized around project commitments, deliverables, resources, and responsibility rather than around a natural system or scientific model.

distinct_from_parent: The parent archetype defines any system-of-interest; this variant specializes the same logic for project governance and execution.

still_same_parent_because: It still solves scope ambiguity by making inclusion, exclusion, interfaces, and review conditions explicit.

use_when: A project is accumulating unclear commitments, hidden stakeholders, or ambiguous deliverables.

use_when: Teams disagree about whether a request is inside the project or belongs elsewhere.

use_when: Success measurement depends on knowing which outcomes are the project’s responsibility.

Boundary Statement

role: States what work and outcomes the project owns.

Exclusion Criteria

role: Prevents adjacent work from being silently absorbed.

Scope Review

role: Rechecks the boundary as conditions change.

Project Scope Statement

role: Documents project inclusions, exclusions, deliverables, assumptions, and dependencies.

example_domains:
product development
construction
policy implementation
consulting

domain: software delivery

example: A feature team defines which user flows are in the first release and which integrations are out of scope.

domain: public works

example: A road project states whether utility relocation and long-term maintenance are included.

failure_mode: scope lock-in

cause: The project boundary is treated as permanent even after evidence changes.

mitigation: Add scheduled scope review and explicit escalation criteria.

Model Scope Definition

short_definition: Defines what a model represents, what it abstracts away, and which interfaces connect model outputs to real-world decisions.

distinctive_feature: The boundary is between representation and represented system, so approximation error and assumption disclosure become central.

distinct_from_parent: The parent applies to any system boundary; this variant focuses on representational fidelity, assumptions, omitted variables, and decision-use limits.

still_same_parent_because: The practical move is still to define the system-of-interest and make inclusion, exclusion, and interfaces explicit.

Approximation

slug: approximation

use_when: A model’s outputs are being used beyond the domain for which the model was built.

use_when: Assumptions, omitted variables, or excluded populations materially affect interpretation.

use_when: Stakeholders need to know what the model does not claim to cover.

Inclusion Criteria

role: Specifies which phenomena, variables, cases, or populations are represented.

Exclusion Criteria

role: Specifies what the model does not cover.

Measurement Scope

role: Connects model boundary to observable data and output validity.

Model Boundary Definition

role: Records represented variables, assumptions, validity limits, and decision-use constraints.

example_domains:
simulation modeling
machine learning
economics
epidemiology

domain: epidemiology

example: A disease model defines whether asymptomatic transmission, mobility, and vaccination status are inside the modeled system.

domain: machine learning

example: A risk model states which population, time horizon, and input features are in scope.

failure_mode: boundary leakage

cause: Users treat a scoped model as valid outside its represented context.

mitigation: Attach explicit use limits and review model deployment contexts.

Responsibility Scope Definition

short_definition: Defines which actors or units are responsible for which parts of a system, including handoffs and shared interfaces.

distinctive_feature: The system boundary is translated into responsibility, ownership, and escalation boundaries.

distinct_from_parent: The parent defines the system-of-interest generally; this variant specifically defines who owns which parts of the system and its interfaces.

still_same_parent_because: It remains a scope-definition intervention: the core action is to clarify what is inside, outside, adjacent, and crossing the responsibility boundary.

Accountability

slug: accountability

use_when: Failures fall between teams, departments, jurisdictions, or service owners.

use_when: People disagree about who owns a risk, metric, decision, or operational task.

use_when: Cross-boundary handoffs cause duplication, omission, or blame shifting.

Responsibility Map

role: Assigns ownership for included elements and boundary interfaces.

Interface Identification

role: Surfaces handoffs where responsibility crosses boundaries.

Scope Review

role: Keeps responsibility boundaries aligned with changing operations.

Operational Responsibility Map

role: Makes ownership, handoff, escalation, and decision rights explicit.

example_domains:
incident response
healthcare coordination
municipal governance
platform operations

domain: platform operations

example: A service ownership map states which team owns each API, dependency, and escalation path.

domain: healthcare

example: A discharge plan defines which clinic, caregiver, or agency owns each follow-up task.

failure_mode: paper ownership

cause: A responsibility map exists but lacks decision authority or escalation paths.

mitigation: Tie the scope definition to operating authority, metrics, and review rituals.

Research Scope Definition

short_definition: Defines the population, cases, variables, time horizon, and evidence base included or excluded from a research claim.

distinctive_feature: The boundary is tied to evidence validity, generalization, and research claims.

distinct_from_parent: The parent defines scope for any system; this variant defines scope for inquiry and evidence claims.

still_same_parent_because: It still uses explicit inclusion, exclusion, and review of the system-of-interest to make action or analysis tractable.

use_when: A research question is too broad, ambiguous, or vulnerable to cherry-picking.

use_when: Evidence boundaries determine whether findings can be generalized.

use_when: The study needs transparent inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Inclusion Criteria

role: Determines which participants, sources, or cases enter the study.

Exclusion Criteria

role: Determines which participants, sources, or cases are left out and why.

Measurement Scope

role: Defines which observations support the claim.

Research Inclusion/Exclusion Criteria

role: Operationalizes the research boundary in a protocol, review, or evidence screen.

example_domains:
clinical research
systematic review
social science
field ecology

domain: clinical trial

example: A protocol defines eligible participants, contraindications, time windows, and endpoints.

domain: systematic review

example: A review specifies databases, publication dates, study designs, and exclusion grounds.

failure_mode: hidden selection boundary

cause: Eligibility or source selection is applied informally.

mitigation: Publish criteria and track exclusions.

near_names:
System-of-Interest Definition
System Boundary Definition
Project Scope Statement
Project Scope Document
Model Boundary Definition
Jurisdictional Scope
Service Boundary Definition
Research Inclusion/Exclusion Criteria
Operational Responsibility Map


Taboo Boundary Navigation

type: archetype

source: generated

batch: First Iteration/Batch 44/Wave 2

source_primes: taboo boundary normativity

slug: taboo

slug: normativity

slug: consent

slug: legitimacy

slug: proportionality

slug: uncertainty

components:
Taboo Boundary
Protected Value
Harm Risk Profile
Safe Discourse Condition
Consent and Exposure Boundary
Boundary Response Choice
Affected Party Safeguard
Legitimacy and Proportionality Test
Facilitator or Trusted Intermediary
Escalation and Referral Path
Documentation Boundary

mechanisms:
Facilitated Taboo Dialogue
Consent Protocol
Ethical Review for Taboo Topic
Confidential Disclosure Channel
Boundary Renegotiation Forum
Content Warning and Context Frame
Taboo-Topic Research Safeguard
Harm Containment Debrief

essence_one_line: Navigate culturally forbidden topics or acts without either ignoring their force or violating important boundaries casually.

compression_statement: When a topic, practice, disclosure, symbol, or act is socially charged as forbidden, navigate the taboo boundary by identifying what the boundary protects, mapping harm and exposure risks, creating safe discourse conditions, and choosing whether to respect, clarify, renegotiate, challenge, or enforce the boundary.

core_intuition: A taboo boundary is powerful because it carries more than disagreement. It may protect dignity, safety, sacred meaning, privacy, grief, identity, or social order, while also potentially blocking inquiry, reform, accountability, or repair. The archetype works by making the boundary and its protected value explicit before deciding how much exposure, challenge, or preservation is justified.

canonical_formula: taboo boundary + protected value + harm-risk profile + consent/exposure boundary + safe discourse condition + response choice + affected-party safeguard + proportionality review -> navigable forbidden boundary without casual violation or silencing

structural_problem: A socially charged boundary marks a topic, act, disclosure, representation, or inquiry as forbidden. Because the boundary carries moral, identity, dignity, privacy, safety, or sacred significance, ordinary discussion can feel like violation, while avoidance can preserve harm, ignorance, exclusion, or unaccountable power. The result is a blocked problem space: people either avoid the matter entirely, transgress recklessly, or enforce the boundary without examining what it protects.

condition: A topic or act is described as forbidden, unspeakable, off-limits, shameful, contaminating, disrespectful, profane, or dangerous to name.

why_it_matters: These cues indicate taboo force rather than ordinary sensitivity. The intervention must handle meaning, harm, and exposure, not just communication style.

condition: Necessary discussion, research, reform, reporting, or enforcement is blocked because people fear violation, backlash, stigma, or social punishment.

why_it_matters: The taboo may be protecting something important, but it may also be preventing learning, accountability, or remedy.

condition: Some participants want to challenge the boundary while others experience challenge as disrespect, harm, or erasure.

why_it_matters: The boundary response choice must separate respect for protected value from automatic preservation of the current prohibition.

condition: People affected by the topic risk exposure, shame, retaliation, stereotyping, or forced testimony.

why_it_matters: Consent and exposure controls must be designed before the topic is opened.

condition: A group lacks shared rules for how to talk about the forbidden matter.

why_it_matters: Without safe discourse conditions, taboo navigation can become silence, spectacle, conflict escalation, or rumor.

condition: The boundary is enforced inconsistently, symbolically, or selectively.

why_it_matters: A legitimacy and proportionality test is needed to determine whether the taboo boundary is protecting a value or serving arbitrary control.

symptom: People avoid naming the issue even when it shapes decisions.

interpretation: Avoidance suggests taboo force; the issue may require protected channels or carefully bounded discussion.

symptom: A single word, example, image, question, or disclosure triggers disproportionate reaction.

interpretation: The boundary may carry symbolic contamination, identity threat, or dignity risk beyond the literal content.

symptom: Participants frame the same action as courageous truth-telling, harmful violation, and necessary accountability.

interpretation: The group has not separated protected value, harm risk, and response choice.

symptom: People demand total openness or total silence.

interpretation: The problem is being forced into a false binary; taboo navigation needs calibrated access, audience, purpose, and safeguards.

symptom: Research, policy, or education around a sensitive topic becomes sensationalized.

interpretation: Inquiry is crossing the boundary without adequate context, consent, or affected-party protection.

symptom: Boundary enforcement protects reputation more than people.

interpretation: The stated protected value may be masking institutional self-protection and should be tested.

root_tension: The archetype manages a tension between protection and inquiry. Taboo boundaries can preserve dignity, safety, privacy, belonging, and meaning; they can also suppress evidence, accountability, adaptation, or repair. The goal is not to abolish taboo force or obey it automatically, but to choose a justified, proportionate, and safeguarded way of handling it.

case: The issue is merely uncomfortable but not culturally forbidden, morally charged, identity-laden, or exposure-sensitive.

why_not: Use ordinary facilitation, psychological safety, or conflict-resolution mechanisms instead.

case: The boundary is already clear, legitimate, and only needs enforcement.

why_not: Use procedural fairness, rule enforcement, access control, or safety governance rather than taboo navigation.

case: The main intervention is changing the meaning of a category or status boundary without special consent or exposure risks.

why_not: Use Symbolic Boundary Reframing.

case: The primary problem is rumor-driven collective threat amplification.

why_not: Use Moral Panic De-escalation when evidence, amplification, and targeted-group protection are the core structure.

case: The situation involves acute safety, legal, clinical, or safeguarding obligations that cannot be handled by dialogue.

why_not: Use the appropriate emergency, legal, clinical, compliance, or safeguarding process before any discretionary taboo discussion.

case: The proposed use of taboo navigation is a way to avoid accountability or silence legitimate testimony.

why_not: That is misuse. The archetype requires preserving legitimate harm signals and creating escalation paths when dialogue is not enough.

structural_intervention: Make the taboo boundary explicit, identify the protected value and harm risks, define consent and exposure limits, create safe conditions for necessary discussion or action, choose a justified response to the boundary, and review whether the process preserved dignity and safety while allowing necessary inquiry, repair, or enforcement.

Name the taboo boundary

logic: Identify what is treated as forbidden: a topic, act, image, relationship, practice, disclosure, question, ritual, category, or inquiry. Record who treats it as forbidden and in what setting.

Clarify the protected value

logic: Ask what the boundary is believed to protect. Possible answers include dignity, privacy, safety, identity, grief, sacred meaning, tradition, trust, group cohesion, or prevention of harm.

Map harm and silence risks

logic: Map harms from opening the topic and harms from keeping it closed. Include exposure, shame, retaliation, sensationalism, stigma, missed accountability, blocked learning, and unequal burden.

Define consent and exposure boundaries

logic: Specify who needs to consent, what material can be seen or heard, what may be recorded, who may be present, and what opt-out or support options exist.

Set safe discourse conditions

logic: Choose the setting, facilitation, rules, pacing, vocabulary, evidence standard, confidentiality, and escalation path needed for the purpose.

Choose a boundary response

logic: Decide whether to respect, clarify, bracket, renegotiate, challenge, enforce, or refer the boundary. The choice should match the protected value, harm profile, and decision authority.

name: Implement with affected-party safeguards

logic: Run the chosen process with protections for those most likely to bear costs. Avoid forced testimony, unnecessary repetition of harmful material, and public symbolic burden.

Review proportionality and aftermath

logic: Evaluate whether the intervention was necessary, proportionate, respectful of consent, effective for the purpose, and adjusted after any harm, backlash, or misunderstanding.

rule: Do not open a taboo topic without a purpose.

guidance: Curiosity, shock, or general openness is not enough. The purpose should be learning, repair, accountability, safety, policy, research, governance, or legitimate deliberation.

rule: Preserve the protected value even when challenging the current boundary.

guidance: A taboo may be harmful in its current form while still pointing to a real value. Challenge the boundary without mocking or erasing what people believe it protects.

rule: Scale exposure to necessity.

guidance: Use the least exposure that can accomplish the legitimate purpose. Restrict audience, detail, recording, repetition, or publication when full exposure adds risk without adding value.

rule: Consent is not a substitute for safeguards.

guidance: Participants may consent under pressure or without understanding downstream circulation. Use consent together with confidentiality, support, documentation boundaries, and review.

rule: Do not confuse silence with safety.

guidance: Avoidance can preserve stigma or harm. If the taboo blocks necessary action, design a safer path rather than declaring the topic impossible.

rule: Escalate when the matter exceeds dialogue.

guidance: If there are acute safety, legal, clinical, safeguarding, or formal accountability obligations, route the issue to the appropriate process.

invariant: Protected values are named before boundary change is attempted.

reason: This prevents reckless transgression and helps distinguish respect for a value from preservation of a harmful rule.

invariant: Affected people are not forced to carry the burden of education, testimony, or symbolic representation.

reason: The archetype must not convert taboo navigation into coerced exposure.

invariant: Discussion conditions match the risk level.

reason: High-risk taboo topics need more structure than ordinary sensitive conversation.

invariant: The response choice is explicit and reviewable.

reason: Respect, renegotiation, challenge, enforcement, and referral are different actions with different responsibilities.

invariant: Legitimate concern is preserved even when panic, shame, or overreaction is reduced.

reason: The archetype must not become a tool for minimizing harm or silencing reporting.

invariant: Documentation and circulation are bounded.

reason: Sensitive material can create harm after the meeting, research, or intervention ends.

outcome: Necessary inquiry or discussion becomes possible without uncontrolled transgression.

evidence: Participants can name the issue, purpose, audience, and safeguards rather than relying on avoidance or shock.

outcome: The protected value behind the taboo is clearer.

evidence: People can state what is being protected and debate whether the current boundary is the right way to protect it.

outcome: Exposure, stigma, and retaliation risks are reduced.

evidence: Consent, confidentiality, support, and documentation limits are implemented and reviewed.

outcome: Boundary decisions are more legitimate and proportionate.

evidence: The group can explain why it respected, clarified, renegotiated, challenged, enforced, or referred the boundary.

outcome: Silencing and sensationalism both decline.

evidence: The taboo topic is neither buried nor turned into spectacle; it is handled with purpose and safeguards.

prose_essence:
Taboo Boundary Navigation is the pattern of handling a forbidden or socially charged boundary without treating it as either untouchable or meaningless. The archetype is needed when a topic, act, disclosure, image, question, or practice carries enough moral, cultural, identity, dignity, privacy, or safety significance that ordinary conversation can feel like violation.

The core move is not simply to “talk about hard things.” It is to ask what the boundary protects, what harm can come from opening it, what harm can come from keeping it closed, who must consent to exposure, and what kind of response is justified. Sometimes the right response is to preserve the taboo boundary. Sometimes it is to clarify it, narrow it, create a safeguarded exception, challenge it, or refer the matter to a formal process. The archetype makes that choice deliberate.

prose_when_to_use:
Use this archetype when a problem cannot be addressed because the relevant topic or action is treated as forbidden, shameful, profane, dangerous, contaminating, or socially punishable. It fits situations where necessary inquiry, reporting, research, education, policy design, community repair, or organizational change would cross a charged boundary.

It is especially useful when people are split between silence and transgression. One side may say, “This must not be discussed,” while another says, “We must break the silence.” Taboo Boundary Navigation slows that binary down. It asks what the boundary protects, whether that protection is legitimate, whether silence is causing harm, and what safeguards would allow the issue to be handled proportionately.

Do not use it as a substitute for emergency response, legal compliance, clinical care, safeguarding, or formal investigation. Those processes may be necessary before any discretionary discussion occurs.

prose_structural_problem:
The structural problem is a blocked boundary. A taboo marks a zone where ordinary inquiry, representation, disagreement, or action becomes socially risky. Because people fear violation, shame, retaliation, stigma, or moral condemnation, the issue may remain unnamed even when it affects decisions and outcomes.

At the same time, taboo boundaries are not automatically irrational. They may protect dignity, grief, privacy, sacred meaning, vulnerable participants, or social trust. The problem is that the boundary’s protective function and its silencing function are often fused. People cannot tell whether they are preserving safety, preserving reputation, avoiding discomfort, protecting a value, or blocking accountability.

This archetype separates those layers so the boundary can be handled with purpose and safeguards.

prose_intervention_logic:
The intervention begins by naming the taboo boundary. What exactly is forbidden: a topic, act, disclosure, category, image, ritual, question, or relationship? Who treats it as forbidden, and in what setting?

Next, the intervention identifies the protected value. A taboo may be understood to protect dignity, safety, privacy, grief, tradition, identity, belonging, or moral order. The draft does not assume that the current taboo boundary is justified, but it also does not treat the protected value as irrelevant.

Then it maps both harm risks and silence risks. Opening the topic can expose people, intensify stigma, create retaliation, or turn sensitive material into spectacle. Keeping it closed can preserve harm, prevent learning, hide evidence, or block repair. The intervention defines consent and exposure boundaries before the topic is opened.

Finally, the group chooses a response: respect the boundary, clarify it, bracket it temporarily, renegotiate it, challenge it, enforce it, or refer the matter to another process. That response is reviewed for legitimacy and proportionality after the fact.

prose_key_components:
- **Taboo Boundary** (`taboo_boundary`): This identifies the charged line around what may be said, done, studied, shown, or challenged. It keeps the archetype focused on forbidden-boundary problems rather than ordinary disagreement.

- **Protected Value** (`protected_value`): This names what the taboo is understood to protect. It may be dignity, privacy, safety, grief, sacred meaning, trust, or group belonging. Treating it as a component prevents the draft from adding it as an unreviewed prime.

- **Harm Risk Profile** (`harm_risk_profile`): This maps harms from both opening and closing the topic. It includes exposure, retaliation, shame, sensationalism, stigma, missed accountability, and blocked repair.

- **Safe Discourse Condition** (`safe_discourse_condition`): This defines the setting, facilitation, audience, vocabulary, pacing, confidentiality, and escalation rules needed to discuss the taboo safely enough for the purpose.

- **Consent and Exposure Boundary** (`consent_and_exposure_boundary`): This specifies who must consent, what material people may encounter, what opt-out choices exist, and how information can be used afterward.

- **Boundary Response Choice** (`boundary_response_choice`): This is the decision about whether to respect, clarify, bracket, renegotiate, challenge, enforce, or refer the taboo boundary. The archetype is not automatically pro-transgression or pro-preservation.

- **Affected Party Safeguard** (`affected_party_safeguard`): This protects people who may bear the cost of the discussion, disclosure, enforcement, or boundary change. It prevents forced testimony and symbolic burden.

- **Legitimacy and Proportionality Test** (`legitimacy_and_proportionality_test`): This asks whether both the taboo boundary and the intervention response are justified, fair, proportionate, and aligned with the protected value.

Optional components include a trusted intermediary, an escalation or referral path, and a documentation boundary. These become important when the taboo involves power asymmetry, confidentiality, safety obligations, or long-term circulation of sensitive material.

prose_common_mechanisms:
Mechanisms implement the archetype; they are not the archetype itself.

A **facilitated taboo dialogue** creates a structured setting for discussion, but it only implements this archetype when it includes protected-value clarification, consent/exposure boundaries, safeguards, and a response choice.

A **consent protocol** operationalizes who participates, what they may be exposed to, how information may be used, and what choices they have. Consent alone is insufficient unless it is paired with harm containment and documentation boundaries.

An **ethical review for taboo topics** helps decide whether inquiry, publication, or discussion is justified. It is a gate or test, not the whole pattern.

A **confidential disclosure channel** lets people surface taboo concerns without immediate public exposure. It must include response obligations so confidentiality does not become burial.

A **boundary renegotiation forum** provides a deliberative setting for deciding whether the taboo should be preserved, narrowed, clarified, challenged, or enforced.

A **content warning and context frame** prepares participants for sensitive material. It is useful when exposure is necessary, but it is only a small part of the archetype.

A **taboo-topic research safeguard** protects participants when taboo material is studied, documented, or published.

A **harm containment debrief** reviews what happened after the taboo was approached and adjusts supports, documentation, or future boundaries.

prose_failure_modes:
One failure mode is **sensationalizing the taboo**. This happens when the topic is opened for shock or attention rather than a legitimate purpose. The mitigation is to require purpose, context, exposure limits, and review.

Another failure mode is **casual boundary violation**. This happens when someone treats the taboo as irrational and ignores the protected value. The mitigation is to clarify the protected value before any challenge.

A third failure mode is **protective silence becoming suppression**. The boundary is preserved indefinitely while harm continues. The mitigation is to map silence harms and create escalation or review paths.

A fourth failure mode is **forced testimony**. Affected people are made to educate others or reveal private experience. The mitigation is voluntary participation, representation alternatives, and support.

A fifth failure mode is **confidentiality without action**. Sensitive information is collected but never acted on. The mitigation is to define response obligations and limits on confidentiality.

A sixth failure mode is **identity attack disguised as boundary challenge**. The mitigation is to separate the protected value from the current boundary form and preserve respect in the challenge process.

prose_neighbor_distinctions:
**Symbolic Boundary Reframing** changes the meaning, status, legitimacy, or inclusion effect of a boundary. Taboo Boundary Navigation is narrower and riskier: it handles boundaries whose discussion or crossing requires consent, exposure control, protected-value analysis, and harm containment.

**Moral Panic De-escalation** addresses disproportionate collective threat response and amplification. Taboo Boundary Navigation may involve fear or moral charge, but its central problem is the forbidden boundary itself.

**Psychological Safety Enablement** helps people speak up and take interpersonal risks. Taboo Boundary Navigation requires psychological safety but also asks whether the taboo should be preserved, challenged, renegotiated, or referred.

**Procedural Fairness** provides fair process. Taboo Boundary Navigation may use fair process, but it adds taboo-specific components around protected values, exposure, consent, and silence harms.

**Content moderation** decides whether material is allowed, labeled, restricted, or removed. Taboo Boundary Navigation asks why the boundary exists and how a forbidden topic can be handled across contexts.

prose_cross_domain_examples:
In an organization, a long-forbidden internal issue may require confidential disclosure, anti-retaliation safeguards, and a decision about what can be shared publicly.

In education, a difficult topic may be taught with purpose, context, consent-sensitive exposure, support, and debrief rather than surprise or avoidance.

In community dialogue, a contested tradition may be discussed by first naming what the taboo protects and what harms silence creates.

In research, a stigmatized experience may be studied with advisory input, staged consent, anonymization, and publication limits.

In platform governance, sensitive material may be allowed for support and education while sensational display is restricted.

prose_non_examples:
A standard meeting about an awkward but ordinary process problem is not this archetype.

A legal confidentiality rule is not this archetype unless the cultural meaning or contestation of the prohibition is the problem.

A content warning alone is not this archetype.

A public provocation meant mainly to shock people is not this archetype.

A symbolic label change is usually Symbolic Boundary Reframing unless the act of discussing or crossing the label boundary itself creates taboo-specific exposure and consent issues.

prose_tradeoffs:
The central tradeoff is openness versus protection. Opening taboo topics can enable learning and repair, but it can also create shame, retraumatization, retaliation, or stigma.

Another tradeoff is respect versus challenge. Preserving a taboo may honor a real value; challenging it may be necessary when the boundary conceals harm or blocks adaptation.

Confidentiality creates a third tradeoff. It can make disclosure possible, but if there is no response obligation, it can hide the issue again.

There is also a tradeoff between local meaning and broader standards. A taboo may have context-specific meaning, but some boundaries may conflict with safety, rights, or fairness obligations.

prose_invariants_to_preserve:
The protected value behind the taboo must be named before boundary change is attempted. Even if the current boundary is harmful, the value it claims to protect may still matter.

Affected people must not be forced to educate others, disclose private experience, or serve as symbols for the group’s learning. Participation should be voluntary and supported.

Exposure must be purposeful and bounded. More detail, more audience, and more circulation are not automatically better.

Silence harms must be considered alongside exposure harms. A taboo can protect dignity, but it can also hide abuse, exclusion, evidence, or design failure.

Response choices must be explicit. Respecting, challenging, renegotiating, enforcing, and referring are different interventions with different responsibilities.

prose_target_outcomes:
The desired outcome is navigability: the group can handle the forbidden boundary without reckless violation or indefinite silence.

A successful intervention makes the protected value visible, reduces unnecessary exposure, creates conditions for necessary inquiry, and produces a proportionate decision about what to preserve or change. It should also leave behind clearer rules for future cases: who can raise the issue, under what conditions, with what safeguards, and through what escalation path.

The archetype also aims to reduce two opposite failures: taboo-breaking as spectacle and taboo-preservation as suppression.

prose_parameter_dimensions:
The archetype can be tuned along several dimensions.

The first is **exposure level**: private, confidential, small-group, public, recorded, published, or archived. Use the least exposure that can accomplish the legitimate purpose.

The second is **boundary response**: respect, clarification, temporary bracketing, limited exception, renegotiation, challenge, enforcement, or referral. These are different actions and should not be blurred.

The third is **consent strength**: notification, opt-out, opt-in, staged consent, renewed consent, or formal consent. Stronger consent is needed when exposure risk is higher.

The fourth is **facilitation intensity**: informal conversation, facilitated discussion, trained mediator, expert review, advisory group, or formal governance body.

The fifth is **documentation level**: no record, private notes, anonymized synthesis, formal record, public report, or archival record. Documentation should be designed before the taboo topic is opened.

The sixth is **escalation threshold**: when the matter must move from dialogue into safety, legal, clinical, compliance, investigative, or governance channels.

prose_variants_and_near_names:
Recognized variants include **Protected-Value Dialogue**, **Taboo-Topic Research Safeguarding**, **Confidential-First Disclosure Path**, and **Boundary Challenge with Safeguards**.

Near names include forbidden topic navigation, taboo discourse design, sensitive topic facilitation, protected-value boundary navigation, and taboo boundary renegotiation. Sensitive topic facilitation is usually only a mechanism unless the taboo-specific structure is present.

Collapsed candidates include content warnings, consent protocols, facilitated dialogue, ethical review, and taboo boundaries. These are useful mechanisms or components, but they do not become full archetypes unless they include the broader intervention logic.

Protected-Value Dialogue

variant_type: subtype

short_definition: A subtype focused on discussing or revising a taboo by first clarifying the value the boundary is meant to protect.

distinctive_feature: It begins with value clarification rather than boundary redesign or open discussion.

distinct_from_parent: The parent covers taboo navigation broadly; this variant narrows the intervention to explicit protected-value clarification.

still_same_parent_because: It still uses taboo boundary identification, harm-risk profiling, consent, and response choice rather than a separate intervention architecture.

source_primes: taboo normativity consent

use_when: Participants disagree about whether a taboo is arbitrary, protective, harmful, or outdated.

use_when: The conversation will fail unless the underlying value is stated before policy or language changes are debated.

use_when: A group needs to distinguish respect for the protected value from automatic preservation of the existing boundary.

domain: workplace

example: A team discusses a forbidden topic around compensation transparency by first naming the values of fairness, privacy, and trust at stake.

failure_modes: Treating value clarification as agreement.

failure_modes: Using reverent language to preserve a harmful boundary without review.

Taboo-Topic Research Safeguarding

short_definition: A research-oriented subtype for studying, documenting, or publishing about taboo topics without coercing or exposing participants.

distinctive_feature: The main design object is the inquiry protocol, not the group conversation itself.

distinct_from_parent: The parent includes research as one domain; this variant adds specific safeguards for data, consent, anonymization, publication, and participant exposure.

still_same_parent_because: It still navigates a taboo boundary through protected-value analysis, harm-risk profiling, consent, and proportionality.

source_primes: taboo consent procedural_fairness

use_when: A necessary inquiry involves stigmatized, forbidden, private, dangerous, or culturally charged material.

use_when: Participants may be harmed by being identified, quoted, categorized, or represented.

use_when: The research context may reward sensationalism or extraction.

example_domains: research journalism education public_health

domain: research

example: A study on a highly stigmatized experience uses anonymization, opt-in interviewing, advisory review, and publication limits.

failure_modes: The research reproduces stigma by turning the taboo into spectacle.

failure_modes: Participants consent to interview but not to later circulation of identifiable details.

Confidential-First Disclosure Path

short_definition: A subtype for surfacing taboo concerns through protected disclosure before public discussion or formal escalation.

distinctive_feature: It sequences disclosure through controlled channels before broader deliberation.

distinct_from_parent: The parent may use public dialogue, review, or boundary renegotiation; this variant privileges confidentiality and staged exposure.

still_same_parent_because: It remains a way of navigating taboo boundaries rather than a general reporting system.

source_primes: taboo consent psychological_safety

use_when: People need to report, name, or explore a taboo concern but public disclosure would create retaliation, shame, or uncontrolled escalation.

use_when: The system needs early signal capture without forcing participants into public testimony.

use_when: There is a safe path from confidential disclosure to support, referral, or governance action.

example_domains: organizations education community_safety research

domain: organization

example: A staff concern about a forbidden internal issue is first routed through a confidential ombud-like path before any public meeting occurs.

failure_modes: Confidentiality becomes a way to bury issues.

failure_modes: Disclosure channels collect sensitive information without clear response obligations.

Boundary Challenge with Safeguards

short_definition: A candidate variant for deliberately challenging a taboo boundary while preventing needless humiliation, exposure, or escalation.

distinctive_feature: The chosen response is boundary challenge rather than respect, clarification, or limited renegotiation.

distinct_from_parent: The parent includes many possible responses; this variant focuses on the high-risk case of justified challenge.

still_same_parent_because: The same taboo navigation components are required, especially protected-value clarification, harm-risk profiling, and proportionality.

source_primes: taboo boundary proportionality

use_when: A taboo boundary appears to silence necessary inquiry, accountability, or reform.

use_when: The challenge is likely to be interpreted as disrespect unless the protected value and safeguards are explicit.

use_when: There is a need to distinguish principled challenge from casual transgression.

example_domains: policy ethics education organizational_change

domain: education

example: A curriculum addresses a historically forbidden topic with clear learning purpose, consent-sensitive framing, and support resources.

failure_modes: Mistaking shock value for courageous challenge.

failure_modes: Ignoring the people who bear the social cost of the challenge.

near_names:
Forbidden Topic Navigation
Taboo Discourse Design
Sensitive Topic Facilitation
Protected-Value Boundary Navigation
Taboo Boundary Renegotiation


Tacit Knowledge Elicitation

batch: First Iteration/Batch 38

slug: metacognition

slug: representation

slug: feedback

slug: scaffolding

slug: transparency

components:
Expert Practice Observation
Cue Elicitation
Decision Rationale Probe
Expert-Novice Comparison
Contextual Validation
Provisional Articulation
Transfer Boundary Annotation
Critical Incident Case
Exception Probe
Sensory or Embodied Cue Capture
Decision Trace
Novice Readback
Practitioner Feedback Loop
Replication Probe

mechanisms:
Cognitive Interview
Shadowing Session
Think-Aloud Protocol
Expert Debrief
Critical Incident Technique
Cognitive Task Analysis
Decision Trace Review
Simulation Replay
Apprenticeship Observation
Case Library Capture
Task Analysis
Judgment Aid

essence_one_line: Draw out expert know-how that is used in practice but not yet articulated.

compression_statement: When important know-how is implicit, elicit tacit knowledge through observation, probing, comparison, and contextual validation so the cues, distinctions, judgments, and limits of practice can be shared, taught, improved, or safely translated.

core_intuition: Experts often act on patterns they notice before they can explain them. Tacit Knowledge Elicitation slows down practice enough to identify the cues, thresholds, exceptions, and reasoning moves that make performance work, while preserving the context that gives those moves meaning.

canonical_formula: situated_practice + cue_probe + rationale_probe + expert_novice_contrast + contextual_validation -> articulated_know_how + transfer_ready_material + preserved_judgment_limits

structural_problem: A person or group reliably performs skillful judgments or actions, but the knowledge that makes the performance work remains unspoken, embodied, contextual, or distributed across practice. Others can see the visible behavior but cannot yet reproduce the underlying distinctions, cues, timing, or decision logic.

condition: Expert performance depends on unnamed cues

signal: Experienced practitioners notice weak signals, thresholds, patterns, or anomalies that novices miss, but explanations collapse into vague phrases such as "you can just tell" or "it depends".

condition: Transfer depends on a vulnerable person or small group

signal: Retirement, turnover, scaling, cross-training, or continuity planning reveals that key know-how is not captured outside a few practitioners.

condition: Novices copy visible actions but miss judgment

signal: Trainees can imitate steps yet fail to know when to adapt, pause, escalate, override a rule, or treat a case as exceptional.

condition: Existing documentation is technically correct but practically insufficient

signal: SOPs, manuals, checklists, or playbooks describe the official process but omit cues, exceptions, timing, heuristics, and local context that make the process usable.

condition: Incident reviews show a gap between written process and real practice

signal: After action analysis reveals informal adaptations, workarounds, or judgment calls that were essential to success or failure but were not previously articulated.

condition: Automation or decision support requires human judgment to be made inspectable

signal: A team wants to encode, assist, simulate, or audit expert judgment, but the knowledge is still embedded in unrecorded practice.

condition: Process improvement is blocked by "that is just how experts do it"

signal: Improvement work cannot distinguish valuable tacit judgment from habit, bias, workaround, or local superstition because the reasoning has not been surfaced.

symptom: Experts give compressed or post-hoc explanations

interpretation: The explanation may name a conclusion but not the perceptual cues, comparisons, intermediate judgments, or uncertainty management that produced it.

symptom: Training relies on long shadowing without clear learning targets

interpretation: Learners are expected to absorb tacit distinctions by exposure, but the cues to notice and questions to ask are not structured.

symptom: Different experts disagree but cannot explain why

interpretation: Their tacit schemas, local histories, and cue-weighting rules differ, yet those differences remain hidden under the same visible task.

symptom: Novices over-apply formal rules or under-respond to exceptions

interpretation: The explicit guidance is missing the contextual judgment that tells practitioners when the ordinary rule should be adapted.

symptom: Knowledge capture produces generic advice

interpretation: Interviews ask for conclusions rather than eliciting concrete cases, decision points, sensory cues, counterexamples, and boundary conditions.

symptom: A proposed protocol loses the craft of the practice

interpretation: The organization is trying to formalize output before eliciting the situated know-how that gives the output meaning.

root_tension: Tacit knowledge is valuable because it is situated, compressed, experiential, and often embodied; those same properties make it hard to state without distortion. The intervention must make enough of the knowledge explicit to support transfer and improvement without pretending that every useful judgment can be fully reduced to a rule.

case: The knowledge is already explicit and merely poorly organized

why_not: Schema Update Protocol, Chunked Information Design, or Progressive Disclosure may be more relevant when the task is reorganizing known content rather than eliciting unspoken practice.

case: The main goal is to teach by demonstration rather than extract knowledge

why_not: Observational learning or cognitive apprenticeship mechanisms may be enough when the learner can safely acquire judgment through guided participation without separate elicitation.

case: The problem is turning a known practice into a repeatable protocol

why_not: Practice-to-Protocol Transition or Tacit-to-Explicit Translation is downstream when the central task is standardizing guidance, not first discovering what the hidden know-how is.

case: The expert performance is unreliable, unsafe, biased, or unvalidated

why_not: Elicitation may still be useful diagnostically, but the output should not be treated as transferable wisdom until validated against evidence, outcomes, and affected stakeholders.

case: The domain cannot safely expose sensitive judgment details

why_not: Security, privacy, legal privilege, clinical confidentiality, or trade-secret constraints may require limited capture, redaction, or specialized governance before elicitation proceeds.

structural_intervention: Observe skilled practice in context; probe cues, decisions, comparisons, and exceptions; contrast expert and novice reasoning; externalize the provisional knowledge; validate it against cases and performance; and mark what can be transferred, what remains contextual, and what requires supervised practice.

step: Scope the tacit skill or judgment

logic: Name the recurring decision, action, perception, diagnosis, escalation, repair, or coordination move whose know-how is not yet articulated.

step: Select credible practitioners and cases

logic: Use practitioners with demonstrated performance and include routine, difficult, borderline, and failure cases so the elicitation does not capture only the heroic or idealized version of practice.

step: Observe practice in its real context

logic: Watch the work as it is done, including tools, timing, interruptions, environmental cues, social signals, informal workarounds, and constraints that may not appear in interviews.

step: Elicit cues and distinctions

logic: Ask what the practitioner noticed, what seemed normal or abnormal, what alternatives were considered, what thresholds mattered, and what would have changed the action.

step: Probe decision rationale without over-trusting self-report

logic: Use concrete cases, recent episodes, artifacts, replays, and counterfactual questions to reduce generic explanation and post-hoc rationalization.

step: Compare expert and novice perception

logic: Identify what experts notice earlier, ignore safely, prioritize differently, or represent differently compared with novices or less successful practitioners.

step: Capture examples, counterexamples, and exceptions

logic: Preserve the range of cases that define the judgment boundary: ordinary cases, edge cases, misleading lookalikes, and situations where the usual rule fails.

step: Externalize provisional know-how

logic: Represent the elicited knowledge as cues, decision points, heuristics, examples, exception rules, watchpoints, or explanatory models while labeling uncertainty and context dependence.

step: Validate in context

logic: Test whether the elicited knowledge helps other practitioners recognize cases, make decisions, or explain action in realistic conditions, and revise when it fails.

step: Decide the transfer boundary

logic: Mark which parts can become explicit guidance, which require supervised practice, which are safety-sensitive, and which should remain provisional or local.

step: Create a feedback loop for refinement

logic: Use practitioner review, novice performance, incident reports, and changing context to revise the elicited knowledge over time.

rule: Anchor elicitation in concrete practice

application: Ask from cases, artifacts, demonstrations, replays, and current work rather than asking experts to produce abstract rules from memory alone.

rule: Separate cue, interpretation, and action

application: Record what was noticed, what it meant, and what the practitioner did; collapsing these into one rule hides the actual judgment structure.

rule: Compare across cases and practitioners

application: Tacit knowledge is more credible when the same cue or distinction survives comparison across routine cases, edge cases, failures, and multiple competent practitioners.

rule: Treat articulation as a hypothesis

application: The first elicited explanation is not the knowledge itself; validate it through performance, peer review, novice use, and counterexamples.

rule: Preserve context and boundary conditions

application: A cue that works in one environment, patient population, machine state, market, culture, or team may fail elsewhere; transfer requires context labels.

rule: Avoid flattening judgment into false certainty

application: When a judgment remains probabilistic, embodied, perceptual, or expertise-dependent, the draft should say so rather than converting it into a rigid checklist item.

rule: Protect sensitive knowledge and affected parties

application: Elicitation can expose vulnerabilities, informal workarounds, personal data, safety risks, or power asymmetries; governance and consent may be necessary.

invariant: The practice context remains visible

reason: Tacit cues often derive meaning from environment, timing, tools, social context, constraints, and prior history.

invariant: Cues are tied to decisions and outcomes

reason: A cue is useful only when it clarifies what it changes: attention, interpretation, action, escalation, timing, or risk.

invariant: Examples and counterexamples define boundaries

reason: Tacit judgment is often learned by contrast; counterexamples prevent the elicited rule from being overgeneralized.

invariant: Expert explanation remains provisional until validated

reason: Experts can rationalize after the fact or omit embodied perception; elicitation must be tested rather than merely recorded.

invariant: What cannot be fully articulated is marked honestly

reason: The archetype should preserve irreducible practice elements, supervised learning needs, and uncertainty instead of pretending all tacit knowledge has become explicit.

invariant: Transfer recipients can actually use the result

reason: A captured explanation that only makes sense to the original expert has not yet become usable knowledge.

outcome: Reduced key-person dependency

evidence_signal: Critical know-how no longer resides only in one expert or informal group; others can inspect at least the main cues and decisions.

outcome: Improved training and onboarding

evidence_signal: Learners know what to notice, what questions to ask, what cases define competence, and where supervised practice is still required.

outcome: Better documentation and decision support

evidence_signal: Playbooks, protocols, aids, or systems include contextual judgment cues rather than only visible steps.

outcome: More reliable expert-novice transfer

evidence_signal: Novices perform better on realistic cases because they receive examples, contrasts, and rationale rather than generic advice.

outcome: Safer process improvement and automation

evidence_signal: Designers can see which judgments are ready for standardization, which need human oversight, and which are too context-bound to automate directly.

outcome: More inspectable organizational practice

evidence_signal: Informal adaptations, judgment calls, and local cues can be discussed, tested, improved, or deliberately preserved.

prose_essence:
Tacit Knowledge Elicitation is the intervention pattern for drawing out know-how that works in practice but has not yet been articulated. It is not merely asking an expert for tips. It is a structured effort to observe practice, identify the cues and distinctions that guide judgment, probe why decisions were made, compare expert and novice perception, and validate the result in realistic contexts.

The archetype is useful because much expertise is compressed into action. A practitioner may recognize a weak signal, pause at the right moment, break a rule safely, escalate early, or ignore a distracting cue without being able to immediately explain the reasoning. The knowledge is real, but it is embedded in examples, bodies, tools, timing, social signals, and local histories.

The goal is not to turn every expert judgment into a rigid rule. The goal is to make enough of the tacit structure visible that it can be inspected, taught, improved, debated, translated, or protected. A mature elicitation draft should say both what has been surfaced and what remains context-dependent.

prose_when_to_use:
Use Tacit Knowledge Elicitation when performance depends on unspoken cues, distinctions, timing, and judgment. It is especially relevant when a team faces succession risk, inconsistent training, key-person dependency, safety-sensitive handoff, process improvement, automation design, or a gap between formal procedure and real practice.

Use it when experts say things like “you will know it when you see it,” “that is just experience,” “it depends,” or “the manual is right, but not complete.” Those phrases often signal that real knowledge exists but is compressed into practice. They can also signal bias or folklore, which is why elicitation must include validation rather than treating expert authority as sufficient.

Do not use the archetype as a substitute for practice. Some tacit knowledge can be represented as cues, examples, thresholds, or heuristics; other parts may require supervised performance, sensory learning, social calibration, or repeated feedback. Good elicitation marks that boundary rather than hiding it.

prose_structural_problem:
The structural problem is invisible competence. The expert’s visible actions are available, but the hidden attention structure is not. Novices can copy the action without knowing why it happened, when it should change, what warning signs preceded it, what alternatives were considered, or which exceptions matter.

This is why purely procedural documentation often fails. A procedure may say what to do, but not what to notice. It may list escalation steps, but not the early signs that a case is becoming abnormal. It may describe a customer-support script, but not how an experienced agent hears confusion, fear, anger, or manipulation. It may list machine checks, but not the smell, vibration, or timing pattern that an expert uses to diagnose trouble.

Tacit knowledge also creates a reliability problem. If valuable know-how lives only in a person or informal group, the organization cannot inspect it, transfer it, improve it, or challenge it. It may lose the knowledge when people leave. It may also preserve unsafe habits because no one has made them visible enough to test.

prose_intervention_logic:
A Tacit Knowledge Elicitation intervention begins by naming the tacit target. The target should be a recurring skill or judgment: diagnosing a fault, recognizing risk, adjusting a material, handling an exception, escalating a case, coordinating under pressure, or choosing when not to follow the ordinary path.

The next move is observation. Elicitation should start as close to real practice as possible: live observation, case replay, artifact review, screen recording, simulation, or immediate debrief. Abstract interviews can help, but they often produce generic advice. Concrete practice gives the elicitor something to probe.

The elicitor then separates cue, interpretation, and action. What did the practitioner notice? What did they think it meant? What alternatives did they consider? What did they do, delay, avoid, or escalate? What would have changed their mind? What looks similar but means something different?

Expert-novice comparison is especially powerful. Expertise often shows up less as more information and more as different attention. Experts notice earlier, ignore distractions safely, represent the situation differently, or use different thresholds. Comparing how experts and novices interpret the same case reveals the hidden distinctions that training needs to name.

Finally, the elicited material is validated. The output may become cue lists, case contrasts, heuristics, decision maps, training notes, judgment aids, or protocol annotations, but it should remain provisional until tested. Other practitioners should review it. Learners should try to use it. Counterexamples should be sought. The context that makes the cue reliable should be recorded.

prose_key_components:
### Expert Practice Observation

Expert Practice Observation captures skilled action in the environment where it actually happens. Observation should include tools, timing, interruptions, social cues, local constraints, informal workarounds, and artifacts. The purpose is not surveillance. The purpose is to see what an interview may omit.

Observation is most valuable when paired with debrief. Watching an expert turn a knob, pause during a call, delay an escalation, or inspect a patient is only the beginning. The elicitor must ask what the expert noticed, what they were comparing against, and what would have made the same visible action wrong.

### Cue Elicitation

Cue Elicitation draws out the signals that guide expert attention. A cue may be sensory, social, temporal, numerical, contextual, or pattern-based. The important question is not only “what did you notice?” but also “what did that cue change?”

Strong cue elicitation separates three layers: the raw cue, the interpretation, and the action implication. For example, a faint smell is not yet a diagnosis; it becomes meaningful when paired with machine history, timing, pressure recovery, and knowledge of normal variation.

### Decision Rationale Probe

A Decision Rationale Probe asks why the practitioner chose, delayed, adapted, or rejected an action. It should use concrete cases and counterfactual prompts: What else could this have been? What would have made you escalate? What would have made you wait? What did you ignore? What was the first sign that the ordinary rule did not fit?

This component guards against generic expertise stories. Experts often compress reasoning after the fact. Good probes recover branching points, uncertainty, and rejected alternatives.

### Expert-Novice Comparison

Expert-Novice Comparison reveals what expertise changes. Novices and experts can review the same case, observe the same artifact, or perform the same simulation. The difference in what they notice and how they interpret it becomes a map of tacit competence.

This comparison should not shame novices. It should identify learning targets: missing cues, misleading cues, premature conclusions, overreliance on formal rules, and situations where novices need guided practice rather than more text.

### Contextual Validation

Contextual Validation tests whether the elicited knowledge works outside the original expert’s head. Can another practitioner recognize the cue? Can a learner apply the distinction to realistic cases? Do peer experts agree? Does the rule fail in a different tool, team, patient population, customer segment, or operating condition?

Validation is what distinguishes Tacit Knowledge Elicitation from knowledge folklore. It converts “an expert said this” into “this articulated knowledge has been tested enough to be useful, with these limits.”

### Provisional Articulation

Provisional Articulation turns elicited know-how into a shareable representation. The representation may be a cue card, case library, decision tree, annotated SOP, training scenario, checklist with judgment notes, or map of examples and counterexamples.

It is provisional because the representation is not the same as the expertise. The draft should include confidence levels, boundary conditions, disputed points, and places where supervised practice is still required.

### Transfer Boundary Annotation

Transfer Boundary Annotation marks what can and cannot be transferred explicitly. Some knowledge can become a written heuristic. Some needs practice with feedback. Some should be represented by examples rather than rules. Some is safety-sensitive or context-bound.

This component prevents the common failure of turning tacit knowledge into brittle instructions. It also protects the integrity of craft, professional judgment, and embodied skill.

prose_common_mechanisms:
Expert interviews are common, but they are rarely sufficient on their own. They work best when anchored in specific cases, artifacts, and decisions.

Shadowing sessions let an observer see real practice. They reveal timing, context, tool use, informal adaptation, and interactional cues. Shadowing should be followed by debrief because visible action does not automatically reveal interpretation.

Think-aloud protocols ask practitioners to verbalize attention and reasoning while acting or reviewing a case. They are useful for cognitive work but may interfere with high-tempo, embodied, or safety-sensitive performance.

Cognitive task analysis breaks expert work into goals, cues, strategies, decisions, errors, and knowledge requirements. It is a strong mechanism when the practice is complex and judgment-heavy.

Critical incident technique uses successes, failures, near misses, and edge cases to reveal what routine descriptions omit. It is powerful but should be balanced with ordinary cases so that the organization does not overlearn from dramatic exceptions.

Simulation replay reconstructs cases and lets practitioners explain what they notice over time. It helps recover temporal judgment: when to wait, when to act, and when the meaning of a cue changes.

Case libraries store elicited examples, counterexamples, cues, rationales, and outcomes. They are useful when tacit knowledge is learned through contrast rather than a single rule.

Judgment aids present cues, watchpoints, and examples in practice-facing form. They should support attention and reflection without pretending to replace expertise.

prose_neighbor_distinctions:
Tacit Knowledge Elicitation is closely related to Observational Learning by Modeling, but they are not the same. Modeling helps learners acquire behavior by watching. Elicitation makes the hidden cues and reasoning inspectable so they can be questioned, represented, validated, and reused.

It is also related to Cognitive Apprenticeship, which appears in the roadmap but is not in the canonical prime list. In this draft it is treated as a proposed prime and as a teaching/mechanism neighbor, not as a canonical source prime. Cognitive apprenticeship can make expert thinking visible during instruction; Tacit Knowledge Elicitation can supply the material that such instruction uses.

Tacit-to-Explicit Translation is downstream. Elicitation asks “what is the hidden know-how?” Translation asks “how should the elicited know-how be encoded as guidance, examples, rules, protocols, or tools?” The roadmap keeps that candidate on merge review, so this draft preserves the boundary rather than absorbing it fully.

Practice-to-Protocol Transition is also downstream. A protocol may be appropriate after tacit know-how has been elicited and validated, but premature protocolization can erase context and craft.

prose_invariants_to_preserve:
The first invariant is context. A tacit cue detached from the setting that gives it meaning can become dangerous. Always record the conditions under which a cue, heuristic, or exception applies.

The second invariant is the link from cue to action. A list of cues is not enough. The draft must say what the cue changes: attention, interpretation, decision, escalation, timing, or confidence.

The third invariant is boundary evidence. Examples and counterexamples should define where the elicited judgment applies and where it fails.

The fourth invariant is humility. Expert articulation is a hypothesis, not final truth. It should be reviewed, tested, and revised.

The fifth invariant is transfer usability. If only the original expert understands the output, the elicitation has not yet created shareable knowledge.

prose_target_outcomes:
A successful Tacit Knowledge Elicitation effort reduces key-person dependency and improves knowledge transfer. It gives learners better cues, richer examples, and clearer questions to ask. It helps organizations distinguish valuable craft from habit, bias, or workaround. It improves documentation by adding judgment notes, exceptions, and context. It can also inform safer automation and decision support by showing which parts of expertise are not ready to automate.

The best evidence is practical: learners perform better on realistic cases, peers recognize the captured distinctions, procedures become more useful without becoming brittle, and the organization can update the capture as conditions change.

Critical Incident Elicitation

short_definition: Elicit tacit judgment from memorable successes, failures, near misses, and edge cases.

distinctive_feature: Uses high-information cases to reveal judgment boundaries and exception cues.

distinct_from_parent: The parent can use any observed practice; this variant relies specifically on critical incidents as the elicitation anchor.

still_same_parent_because: It still follows the same pattern of cue probing, rationale probing, articulation, and contextual validation.

use_when: Routine practice descriptions are too generic.

use_when: Incidents reveal hidden cues, thresholds, or exception handling.

use_when: The organization needs to learn from successes and failures without reducing them to blame.

example_domains:
safety
clinical practice
operations
incident response

domain: Aviation maintenance

example: A near-miss debrief reveals the subtle cues that led a mechanic to question a routine inspection result.

failure_modes: Turning incident memory into blame rather than knowledge capture.

Expert-Novice Contrast Elicitation

short_definition: Elicit tacit knowledge by comparing what experts and novices notice, represent, and decide in the same case.

distinctive_feature: Uses contrast between levels of competence to reveal hidden distinctions.

distinct_from_parent: The parent can elicit from experts alone; this variant requires side-by-side comparison with novice perception or performance.

still_same_parent_because: The output is still articulated tacit know-how with validation and transfer boundaries.

use_when: Novices can perform visible steps but miss judgment.

use_when: Training needs to name what expertise changes.

use_when: Expertise is defined by attention, prioritization, or exception handling.

example_domains:
onboarding
clinical education
skilled trades
customer support

domain: Technical support

example: Experts and novices review the same call; the comparison reveals which tone shifts signal confusion versus anger.

failure_modes: Assuming all expert differences are good.

failure_modes: Shaming novices instead of using contrast as a diagnostic tool.

Shadowing-Based Elicitation

short_definition: Elicit tacit knowledge by observing practitioners in real work and probing what was noticed or decided.

distinctive_feature: Prioritizes situated observation before abstract explanation.

distinct_from_parent: The parent can use interviews, replays, or simulations; this variant specifically starts from live or near-live observation.

still_same_parent_because: Observation is a mechanism for the same elicitation-and-validation structure.

use_when: The work context strongly shapes judgment.

use_when: Interviews alone produce generic statements.

use_when: The practice includes timing, interruptions, tools, and social cues.

example_domains:
operations
healthcare
craft
field service

domain: Field service

example: A knowledge manager shadows technicians to capture what they notice before deciding which diagnostic path to pursue.

failure_modes: Observer records visible steps but does not probe hidden judgment.

Cue-Based Judgment Capture

short_definition: Elicit the cues and thresholds that trigger expert interpretation, action, escalation, or restraint.

distinctive_feature: Centers the elicitation around cue -> interpretation -> action links.

distinct_from_parent: The parent can elicit broader know-how; this variant focuses specifically on cue structure and threshold judgment.

still_same_parent_because: It still turns implicit practice knowledge into validated, transferable material.

use_when: Expertise is perceptual, diagnostic, or pattern-recognition-heavy.

use_when: The practice depends on weak signals or thresholds.

use_when: Formal rules omit what practitioners actually monitor.

example_domains:
diagnosis
quality control
security monitoring
customer interaction

domain: Quality control

example: Inspectors describe which texture and reflection changes indicate a defect rather than normal variation.

failure_modes: Cues are recorded without context or base rates.

Tacit Knowledge Transfer Debrief

short_definition: Use a structured debrief between expert and learner to surface cues, rationales, mistakes, and next-practice targets.

distinctive_feature: Combines elicitation with immediate transfer and feedback.

distinct_from_parent: The parent may produce knowledge artifacts; this variant occurs inside an active learning or coaching loop.

still_same_parent_because: The central move remains surfacing tacit cues and rationale for validation and reuse.

use_when: A learner has just observed or attempted a task.

use_when: The goal is to make hidden judgment visible while experience is fresh.

use_when: Feedback needs to include cues and reasoning, not only performance correction.

example_domains:
apprenticeship
clinical rounds
sales coaching
incident response training

domain: Clinical education

example: After rounds, a preceptor asks what the trainee noticed, then explains which subtle patient cues changed the care plan.

failure_modes: Debrief becomes generic praise or correction without cue elicitation.

failure_modes: Power dynamics suppress learner questions.

near_names:
Tacit Knowledge Capture
Expertise Capture
Know-How Elicitation
Expert Knowledge Elicitation
Knowledge Harvesting
Cognitive Task Analysis