{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management__linguistics_semiotics","trajectory_id":"R","attempt_index":0,"archetype_slug":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management","domain_slug":"linguistics_semiotics","decision":"CANDIDATE","problem_id":"obsolete_annotation_guideline_authority_drift","causal_lever_id":"lifecycle_governed_annotation_authority","proposal":{"problem":"Successive versions of corpus-annotation manuals, tag definitions, coding examples, and interpretive memos remain discoverable without reliable current, superseded, or archival status. Annotators and analysts may therefore apply obsolete conventions, while indiscriminate removal would prevent reconstruction of how earlier annotations were produced. Whether this materially affects a given program is a HYPOTHESIS to test.","actors_substrate":["corpus stewards and annotation-governance boards","annotators and adjudicators","linguists reusing annotated corpora","language communities represented by the data","versioned annotation manuals, tagsets, mappings, examples, and decision memos"],"observable_state":"Multiple dated guidance artifacts coexist; some lack stable identities, validity intervals, successor links, dependency records, or conspicuous authority labels, and citations or workflows still resolve to them.","consequence":"Obsolete conventions can masquerade as current authority, producing inconsistent annotation and interpretation, while unsafe cleanup can erase provenance needed to reproduce historical analyses.","affected_objective":"Current annotation consistency and interpretive clarity, subject to preservation of provenance, reproducibility, and historically meaningful convention change.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"sequential accumulated layers","domain_realization":"Successive tagsets, manuals, examples, mappings, and adjudication memos deposited across annotation rounds.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"changed usefulness or validity","domain_realization":"A prior rule may be invalid for new annotation yet necessary for interpreting a corpus produced under it.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"stale layer mistaken for current truth","domain_realization":"An unlabeled legacy guideline may be followed as the operative convention.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"},{"archetype_element":"dependency and reconstruction risk","domain_realization":"Published annotations, scripts, papers, and adjudications may depend on the exact historical rule version.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"preservation exceptions","domain_realization":"Historically significant conventions, contested decisions, and versions cited by released corpora require explicit holds.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"bounded active stack with differentiated disposition","domain_realization":"Current guidance stays prominent; superseded material is labeled, archived, compacted, or removed only after dependency review.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"}],"component_map":[{"component":"layer_inventory_and_identity_map","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Registry assigning stable identifiers to every guideline, tagset, mapping, example set, and memo version."},{"component":"deposition_order_and_age_index","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Creation, approval, effective, and supersession dates plus version lineage."},{"component":"retention_policy_matrix","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Rules by artifact class for active retention, archival duration, and eligible disposition."},{"component":"decay_function_or_aging_rule","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Elapsed review interval raises revalidation priority but never presumes semantic worthlessness."},{"component":"expiration_trigger_definition","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Supersession, missed review, broken references, or corpus retirement triggers review or demotion."},{"component":"layer_value_and_risk_score","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Transparent ranking using current use, citation, reconstruction value, contradiction, and misuse risk."},{"component":"dependency_and_reconstruction_check","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Trace corpora, tools, publications, courses, and adjudications that cite or encode a version."},{"component":"pruning_or_archival_pathway","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Refresh, supersede, archive, compact, quarantine, or delete as distinct outcomes."},{"component":"preservation_exception_register","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Named holds for evidentiary, historical, community, or reproducibility value."},{"component":"deletion_audit_and_rollback_window","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Recorded rationale and reversible quarantine before destruction."},{"component":"resource_budget_and_storage_tier","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Attention and search prominence are primary scarce resources; storage tier is secondary."},{"component":"review_cadence_and_revalidation_loop","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Periodic owner review of authority, dependencies, holds, and successor links."},{"component":"legal_hold_or_compliance_override","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Research-integrity, consent, litigation, contractual, or records obligations block disposition."},{"component":"hot_warm_cold_access_state","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Current-authoritative, legacy-accessible, and deep-archive visibility states."},{"component":"orphan_layer_detection","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Identify artifacts with no live inbound dependency after checking external citations."},{"component":"supersession_marker","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Conspicuous banner naming status, validity interval, and successor."},{"component":"layer_compaction_candidate_flag","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Flag redundant examples or memos for a loss-documented concordance, retaining originals when needed."},{"component":"rehydration_or_restore_procedure","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Procedure to retrieve archived guidance and reconnect it to the corpus version it governed."},{"component":"deletion_impact_estimate","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Estimate affected corpora, users, citations, disputes, and reconstruction cost."},{"component":"stale_context_detector","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Detect contradictions with current manuals, missing validity context, broken links, or changed tag semantics."}],"mechanism_dispositions":[{"slug":"age_weighted_value_score","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"OPERATIONAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Use age only to prioritize review; publish factors separately and prohibit automatic disposal from the composite.","counterfactual_removal":"Triage becomes slower but the core lifecycle remains viable."},{"slug":"archive_restore_test","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"TEST_DESIGN","adaptation_or_rejection":"Sample archived manuals and mappings across age bands and reconstruct their link to historical corpora.","counterfactual_removal":"Archival would not establish recoverability, undermining the preservation promise."},{"slug":"cache_eviction_rule","disposition":"incompatible","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Access recency is not legitimate authority for linguistic guidance, and the main constraint is interpretive prominence rather than a fixed fast-tier ceiling.","counterfactual_removal":"No material change."},{"slug":"dependency_safe_delete_check","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Trace both machine-readable and documented human citations; incomplete external visibility blocks deletion.","counterfactual_removal":"Cleanup could make published annotations or analyses uninterpretable."},{"slug":"lifecycle_storage_tiering_policy","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"OPERATIONAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Translate tiers chiefly into search visibility and authority states, with storage tiers underneath.","counterfactual_removal":"Deletion safety remains, but stale guidance continues competing for attention."},{"slug":"log_rotation_and_cleanup_job","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Generational, content-blind disposal could erase a rarely used but historically necessary convention.","counterfactual_removal":"No material change."},{"slug":"retention_schedule","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Govern artifact classes while allowing corpus-linked, historical, and compliance exceptions.","counterfactual_removal":"Disposition reverts to ad hoc choices and exceptions become hidden."},{"slug":"soft_delete_quarantine_window","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Hide candidates from ordinary search while retaining owner-approved restoration during a risk-sized window.","counterfactual_removal":"A mistaken disposition can become irreparable before downstream users report it."},{"slug":"stale_layer_detection_dashboard","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Inventory guidance and flag missing context, contradiction, and supersession rather than treating age alone as staleness.","counterfactual_removal":"The proposed lever lacks a systematic way to find misleading active layers."},{"slug":"time_to_live_ttl_policy","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Fixed self-executing expiry is too blind for artifacts whose historical interpretive value can persist; deadlines may trigger review only.","counterfactual_removal":"No material change because review triggers supply boundedness without automatic expiry."},{"slug":"tombstone_or_deletion_marker","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Leave a durable identity-level marker stating deletion or supersession and routing users to a successor or archive record.","counterfactual_removal":"Absence becomes ambiguous and old citations can silently fail or resolve to stray copies."}],"causal_chain":["Inventory identity-resolved guidance and record its authority, age, context, and dependencies.","Detect likely stale or context-stripped artifacts and prioritize them for owner review.","Apply class policy, explicit holds, and dependency checks to choose refresh, supersession, archive, quarantine, or retention.","Demote superseded material from ordinary discovery while preserving tombstones and successor links.","Test restoration and periodically revalidate exceptions and policies.","HYPOTHESIS: reduced exposure to unlabeled legacy guidance lowers obsolete-rule use without impairing reconstruction."],"baseline":"Teams leave shared-drive, repository, and publication-linked guidance in place; users infer authority from filename, date, search rank, or local habit, and cleanup occurs only after confusion or storage pressure.","nearest_rival":"Maintain immutable version history and improve current-document search ranking, but impose no explicit retention classes, dependency-gated disposition, quarantine, or restore tests.","authority_safety":{"affected_parties":["annotators and adjudicators","corpus maintainers","researchers relying on prior releases","represented language communities","records, legal, and research-integrity stakeholders"],"decision_authority":"The corpus owner and annotation-governance board may change active status; destruction additionally requires records or compliance clearance and accountable artifact ownership.","authorized_first_step":"Run an eight-week, read-only pilot on one annotation project: inventory at most 100 guidance artifacts, label candidate status in a separate index, trace dependencies, and compare legacy-guidance retrieval and reconstruction performance with the baseline. No source artifact is altered or deleted.","excluded_actions":["automatic deletion from age or score","changing published annotations during the pilot","removing contested or dependency-uncertain artifacts","treating governance status as a judgment that an older linguistic convention lacks scholarly value"],"halt_rollback":"Halt if any sampled corpus cannot be reconstructed, a hold or affected-community objection is unresolved, or status labels increase erroneous retrieval. Remove pilot labels, restore prior search presentation, and retain the audit record."}},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"Older guidance may be intentionally active because variation reflects legitimate dialect, genre, theoretical framework, or historical convention rather than staleness; observed disagreement may instead arise from ambiguous current rules or inadequate training.","analogy_break":"Linguistic meanings and conventions do not monotonically decay like stored bytes: old rules can remain constitutive evidence, coexist with current rules, or regain relevance, and their authority may be distributed across communities rather than owned centrally.","failure_condition":"The approach fails if artifacts cannot be identity-resolved, external dependencies remain materially invisible, or governance cannot distinguish current operational authority from enduring scholarly value.","problem_falsifier":"A representative audit finds that unlabeled legacy artifacts are rarely encountered or acted upon and that annotation inconsistency is explained by ambiguity in the current guideline, task design, or training rather than obsolete-layer authority drift.","intervention_falsifier":"In the bounded pilot, lifecycle labels and demotion do not reduce obsolete-rule retrieval or improve blinded annotation agreement, while reconstruction time, missing-reference incidents, or stakeholder disputes worsen relative to baseline and the nearest rival.","risks":["Central governance may suppress legitimate plural conventions.","A staleness score may create false precision or encode theoretical bias.","Demotion can make minority-language or historically important evidence practically invisible.","Incomplete dependency discovery can break reproducibility.","Quarantine may conflict with valid erasure obligations.","Lifecycle metadata and tombstones can themselves accumulate or disclose sensitive provenance."]},"null_rationale":null,"classification":{"candidate_kind":"DOMAIN_TRANSFER","prior_art_status":"UNSEARCHED","evidence_maturity":"HYPOTHESIS"},"revision_change_log":{"revision_kind":"ORIGINAL","prior_problem_id":null,"prior_causal_lever_id":null,"problem_changed":false,"causal_lever_changed":false,"conceptual_changes":[],"operational_changes":[],"repairs_addressed":[]},"confidence":0.84,"generator_notes":"Closed-book structural inference from the supplied packet only; no external prior-art or empirical search was performed."}