About the register
Bad Provenance exists because the two halves of an object's story are usually told as one.
An object has a physical history: what it is made of, where it was made, who owned it, what was paid. It also accumulates an oral history: what people believe happened around it, what they were told when it changed hands, what they decided it meant. Both are worth keeping. Collapsed together, neither can be examined.
The register keeps them in separate blocks on the same page. It records what it can establish under Recorded, and what it has been told under Asserted, with each account attributed to whoever gave it. The reader is trusted to do the rest.
What the register does not do
It does not rule on whether an account is true. It does not rank objects against one another, publish a single score, or describe an object in terms that assume an account is settled. It does not treat an account as more credible because it is more dramatic — that is precisely why how grave an account is and what it rests on are recorded as two separate figures.
It does not take possession of objects as a condition of entry. Most objects in the register have never been in the register's hands, and their records say so.
Objects the register owns
The register holds a small number of objects itself. These are entered under the same rules and carry a visible mark on their pages. The mark exists so that the register's own interest is on the record rather than left to be discovered.
Corrections
Records are corrected when something in the Recorded block is shown to be wrong, and the file notes the date it was last changed. Accounts in the Asserted block are not edited to make them more plausible; if an account is retracted, that retraction is recorded alongside it.
A record is never deleted. Where a record is withdrawn, the page and its number remain, with a note explaining that it was withdrawn.
