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Public Criteria Register

Public register — instantiates Signal Value Preservation

Publishes, in the open, the exact criteria a signal requires and the roster of who may issue it — so receivers and challengers can see, cite, and contest the standard behind the mark.

Public Criteria Register is a published, versioned artifact that states openly what a signal requires and who is authorized to grant it. Its distinguishing idea is transparency and accountability, not the decision itself: the Signal Issuance Rubric authors the criteria and applies them case by case, while the register publishes them, names the accredited issuers, and thereby lets any receiver check what the mark is supposed to mean and any observer contest a wrongful grant. By making the standard and the issuer roster public, it turns a private badge into a checkable claim and puts each issuer's reputation on the line for every mark they award.

Example

A "Certified Sustainable" seafood seal only works if buyers trust it, because sustainability is a credence attribute — one a shopper cannot verify even after eating the fish.[1] Trust evaporates the moment the seal appears on obviously indiscriminate product. A public criteria register fixes the standard in the open: the exact fishery conditions required, the audit evidence, the version history of the standard, and the roster of certifiers authorized to award the seal. Now a retailer, an NGO, or a competitor can point to a specific published clause and say "this product does not meet 4.2." The register inspects no single fishery itself — it makes the bar and the grantors visible enough that a wrongful seal can be called out, which is what keeps the seal worth trusting.

How it works

The distinctive move is publication of three things receivers and challengers can cite: the criteria (authored elsewhere), the roster of who is accredited to issue, and the version history with effective dates. Its own contribution is openness plus the authority boundary plus a citable target for accountability; it consumes the criteria from the rubric rather than writing them. The register does not decide any case — it exposes the standard so that others can hold issuers to it.

Tuning parameters

  • Disclosure depth — headline criteria vs. the full evidentiary standard and audit methodology. Deeper enables real challenge but exposes gaming vectors.
  • Roster scope — publishing who may issue, and optionally each issuer's record. A public record deters lax certifiers but invites disputes.
  • Versioning — how visibly changes and effective dates are tracked, so an old mark isn't judged by a new rule or vice versa.
  • Challenge channel — whether and how outsiders can formally contest a grant against a published clause.
  • Update governance — who may amend the published criteria, and whether that amendment is itself disclosed.

When it helps, and when it misleads

Its strength is that it converts a trust-me badge into a citable standard and distributes enforcement to anyone who can read the register. Its failure mode is the paper standard: publishing criteria without publishing conformance lets the register look rigorous while grants quietly drift from it. The classic misuse is standards-washing — publishing an impressive standard as marketing while issuing against a looser private one. The discipline that guards against this is to pair publication with independent conformance evidence — audits, a False-Positive Review Board — and to keep the version history honest rather than retroactively tidy.

How it implements the components

  • issuance_authority_boundary — the register publishes who is accredited to create and grant the signal, fixing that boundary in the open.
  • issuer_accountability_hook — by making the standard and the grantors public and citable, it puts each issuer's reputation behind every mark.

It does not author or apply the criteria it publishes (evidence_and_specificity_rule, signal_claim_definition) — those come from the Signal Issuance Rubric, which the register consumes — and it does not price issuance (channel_scarcity_policy), which is Issuance Cost or Bond.

Notes

A register publishes; it does not enforce. On its own it can make a lapse visible without correcting it — enforcement needs a revocation or downgrade path (Credential Revocation or Downgrade) and conformance audits. Treat the register as the citable standard others act against, not as the action itself.

References

[1] A credence good (Darby & Karni) is one whose quality the buyer cannot verify even after use, so a certification or seal substitutes for direct inspection. That is exactly why the standard behind the seal, and not the seal alone, has to be public: it is the only thing a receiver can actually check. ↩