Words used here

Sixteen terms this site uses in a narrower sense than they usually carry. Where a word does more work here than elsewhere, it is defined below.

A map made of arrows only works if the words on it mean one thing. Several of the words below are used loosely in general writing about this subject, and using them loosely here would make the arrows meaningless. Where a definition is narrower than you expected, the narrowness is the point.

The vocabulary of the graph

Condition

Something that is either true or false at a given moment. Not an action, not a step, not an achievement. A condition can become false again later without anybody doing anything.

Card

One page describing one condition. Thirty seven of them.

Depends on

The set of conditions that must be true for this one to be true. Drawn as arrows into the card.

Blocks

The set of conditions that cannot be true while this one is false. Arrows out. Computed from the depends lists rather than written separately, so the two can never disagree.

Root

A card with nothing upstream on this map. Three exist. When a root is false there is no further diagnosis available.

Terminal

A card with nothing downstream on this map. Three exist. A failure there is contained rather than unimportant.

Upstream and downstream

Directions along the arrows. Upstream is towards causes and roots. Downstream is towards consequences and endings.

Stage

A grouping of cards by how early in the chain they sit. Eight of them, lettered A to H. A filing system, not a schedule.

Words about addresses

Onion address

A string of 56 base32 characters followed by .onion, derived from the key of the service it names. Not a domain name, and not something a third party can repoint.

Mirror

Another address operated by whoever operates the first one. Used here only in that narrow sense, never as a synonym for any address that resembles a site.

Copy

Something built to resemble a site, run by somebody else. Indistinguishable from a mirror by looking at the page, which is the whole difficulty.

Shape

The checkable properties of a string on its own: length and character set. Shape rules candidates out and never rules one in.

Words about evidence

Confirm

Perform a check whose result you can observe yourself, with what you already have. Never a check that involves opening a published address, and never a check whose result is somebody else's assertion.

Claim

A statement that needs something behind it. This site avoids making claims it cannot support, which is why the addresses carry no labels.

Simultaneous

Several conditions true in the same moment rather than each at some point in the past. Only one card on the map is about this, and it is the busiest card in its stage.

Contained

A failure that does not travel. The property of a terminal card. Distinct from a failure that does not matter.

Words that appear on other sites and not on this one

Verified, working, live, checked, uptime, status, official and recommended are all absent here. Each of them asserts something about a service this site does not contact. Their absence is not an oversight and it is not a stylistic preference. The addresses page explains what is published instead, and how to read a card explains what the confirm label is allowed to contain.