Moderation policy

This page explains what the verification badges on Analog Quest mean, how moderators are chosen, and how to challenge a decision.

The project has no scientific advisory board. The badges here do not carry institutional authority. What they do carry is a transparent record of who reviewed each match, when, and why.

Tiers

Every programmatic match starts at Tier 1. Moderators can promote a match to a higher tier only with a written justification, which becomes part of the public moderation log.

Tier 1 · syntactic
Two equations from different domains normalize to the same canonical symbolic form. The match is a structural coincidence that may or may not reflect deeper mathematical equivalence. Tier 1 is the pipeline's default output. It is a candidate, not a claim.
Tier 2 · structural
A moderator has confirmed that the shared canonical form reflects the same mathematical structure in both source contexts (same order of differential equation, same variational setup, same geometry). Requires a written note explaining the structural correspondence.
Tier 3 · transferable
A moderator has argued that theory or methods could plausibly transfer between the two domains based on this structural equivalence. Requires a written note identifying which techniques could be borrowed and in which direction.
Tier 4 · validated
A domain expert outside the project has confirmed the match as a substantive cross-domain hypothesis. Reserved. Currently empty.

Rejection reasons

A moderator rejecting a match must choose one of these reasons. Rejected matches stay in the database for the audit trail but are hidden from /discoveries.

not_cross_domain
Both papers are in the same field — not a cross-domain match.
parser_error
SymPy mis-parsed one or both equations; the match is an artifact of the canonicalizer, not the mathematics.
superficial_match
The canonical forms match but the equations mean different things in their respective domains.
trivial_form
The shared form is too generic to be a meaningful connection (e.g. “F = ma”, “y = mx + b”).
standard_canonical_object
A specific textbook object appearing in many papers — the round metric on a 2-sphere, the Pythagorean theorem, the SGD update rule, the heat equation. Rejecting with this reason adds the canonical form's hash to a trivia list, so future matches on the same form are never generated. The system gets smarter as moderators teach it.
duplicate
The same match already exists under a different match ID.
other
See the moderator's note. Used sparingly.

How moderators are chosen

Moderators are invited by the project admin. There is no application form. Invitations are single-use tokens sent privately; anyone with a GitHub account can redeem one and become a moderator for the project.

A moderator can promote a match to Tier 2, 3, or 4 (with note), reject a match (with reason), or skip. Moderators cannot create further moderators — only the admin can, to prevent rogue self-replication.

Any moderator action can be reversed by another moderator or by the admin. Every action is recorded in an append-only moderation log for accountability.

Challenging a decision

Disagreement with a moderation decision is welcome and expected. Open an issue at github.com/currentlycurrently/analog-quest and reference the match ID. Include:

  • Which match you're challenging and what the current tier is
  • What tier you believe it should be, and why
  • If relevant, a short argument about the mathematical structure that the original moderator may have missed

Honest limitations

A few things we want readers to know up front:

  • Most Tier 1 matches will never be promoted. The pipeline is tuned to recall over precision; human review is the precision layer.
  • The 2026 LaTeX canonicalizer cannot expand user-defined macros, handle all tensor index conventions, or recognize every mathematical operator. Some real cross-domain matches will be missed for notational reasons that have nothing to do with their scientific content.
  • A Tier 2 or Tier 3 badge means a moderator read the equations and believed the connection was structural. It does not mean a domain expert in either field has endorsed the connection. Tier 4 is the tier for that, and Tier 4 is currently empty.
  • The moderation log is append-only but not immutable in the cryptographic sense — the project admin has the DB credentials and could edit it. The audit trail is as trustworthy as the admin.