A lead is not a Receipt
Videos, social posts, comments, transcripts, rumors, search results, and repeated claims can generate research questions. They do not become historical proof until the underlying evidence is found, identified, and evaluated.
Primary sources · Archives · Receipts
A receipt needs
an address.
Redacted Forge does not treat “I saw it online” as a source locator. Important claims should point to identifiable documents, archives, pages, sections, catalog numbers, timestamps, datasets, photographs, maps, artifacts, or other reproducible source locations whenever the record allows it.
Primary does not mean infallible
A primary source can be close to an event and still be biased, incomplete, mistaken, strategic, forged, retrospective, or limited. An archive holding a record tells us where it is preserved; it does not endorse everything inside it.
Source locator
Where possible, a public Receipt identifies the institution, title, creator, date, collection or case identifier, page, section, timecode, stable URL, or other locator needed to find the underlying source again.
Corroboration
Important claims should not rest on one ambiguous record when independent confirmation is reasonably available. Corroboration may come from additional documents, scholarship, datasets, archaeology, oral histories, photographs, maps, or other appropriate source families.
Counterevidence
The strongest good-faith evidence against a conclusion belongs in the investigation. It is not buried merely because it makes the story less clean.
Rights and access
Being able to inspect a historical source does not automatically grant anyone the right to republish the whole thing. Public-domain status, licenses, archive terms, attribution requirements, and other rights remain attached to the source.
What a Redacted Receipt shows
Source institution · document or record title · date · creator · source type · locator · claim supported · what it proves · what it does not prove · counterevidence · confidence · rights/attribution · correction state.
The point is simple: when a source matters to the conclusion, you should be able to understand why it matters and where it came from.
Read a source for yourself
Separate observation from interpretation, compare counterevidence, and keep a usable citation.
Open the source-analysis guide and printable worksheet