# How to Read This Wiki
> [[Home]] · [[Research Map]] · [[About This Wiki]] · [[License]]
A short user guide for first-time visitors.
## Entity types
The wiki is organized into nine substantive page types, each in its own folder:
| Type | What it is | Examples (as the corpus grows) |
|---|---|---|
| **People** | Individuals named in the corpus | Agency officers, FOIA officers, vendor representatives, elected officials |
| **Organizations** | Agencies, vendors, partner jurisdictions | [[Conway Police Department]], [[Flock Safety, Inc.]], [[Axon Enterprise, Inc.]], data-sharing partners (including out-of-state and private-sector) |
| **Concepts** | Policy frames, technical mechanisms, programs | ALPR, asset-forfeiture and free-trial procurement, hot lists, federal-LE data pipelines, real-time crime centers |
| **Events** | Datable moments | FOIA filings, contract executions, deployment dates, audit events |
| **Sources** | Per-document pages | Organized as `sources/<jurisdiction>/<production>/<friendly title>` |
| **Synthesis** | Cross-cutting analytical essays | Patterns spanning jurisdictions — e.g. procurement, vendor dynamics |
| **Tensions** | Contradictions, competing framings, and unresolved evidence conflicts | A stable `T###` question with statements on both sides and a resolution status |
| **Dialectics** | Isolated thesis, antithesis, and synthesis phases | A `D###` argument testing a selected tension without collapsing the opposing cases |
| **Data registers** | Accessible, structured fallback views behind public research tools | [[Arkansas Camera Map Data]], the 119-record register behind the interactive camera evidence map |
## Wikilinks
Cross-references between pages use **Obsidian double-bracket syntax**: wrapping a page title inside two opening square brackets and two closing square brackets resolves to the matching published page. Some links use the **piped-alias form** (with a vertical pipe between the target and the display text) to show different text while still linking to the same target page.
When you hover over a wikilink in the published site, Obsidian Publish shows a small preview of the target page. Clicking opens it.
## Navigation, outline, and camera map
The left navigation and search expose the full public page set. On long articles, the page outline supplies section-level navigation; the relationship graph is deliberately subordinated because it is not a geographic or evidentiary map. A page's **Backlinks** panel shows which other pages link into it.
[[Research Map]] is the principal visual and topical route. Its geographic map plots exact coordinates present in the records, with filters for jurisdiction, agency, vendor/system, and evidence stage. [[Arkansas Camera Map Data]] is the complete non-interactive fallback and citation register.
## The two-hop evidence rule
Every factual claim on every wiki page is anchored to a raw FOIA source — typically with a file path, location, and a verbatim quote. The path is:
**Wiki page → Source page → Raw FOIA document**
That's at most two hops. The wiki page summarizes; the source page quotes; the raw FOIA document remains the primary evidence for Arkansas-agency conduct. Tier-2 through Tier-4 contextual claims instead link directly to a local archived-source extract.
If you want to verify a specific claim, follow the wikilink to the cited source page, then check the raw-source citation. The raw FOIA documents are not published on the public site — request them from the originating Arkansas agency under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act (Ark. Code § 25-19-101 et seq.).
## Source-tier hierarchy
The wiki distinguishes four tiers of source:
- **Tier 1** — the FOIA corpus (raw productions from Arkansas agencies). Tier 1 sources are the only sources that establish what an Arkansas agency *did*.
- **Tier 2** — primary public records outside the corpus (statute text, court opinions, agency-published documents on `.gov` sites, vendor SEC filings, Flock Safety's own published documentation). Tier 2 contextualizes; it never substitutes for Tier 1.
- **Tier 3** — authoritative secondary sources (established news outlets — ADG, Arkansas Times, Arkansas Advocate; national outlets where they cover Flock specifically; established advocacy analyses from organizations like ACLU and EFF; peer-reviewed scholarship on ALPR systems).
- **Tier 4** — reference (encyclopedias). Used only for uncontested biographical or geographic context, never for substantive factual claims.
Citations are tier-labeled. Tier 1 claims cite the wiki source page; Tiers 2–4 cite the local web-archive page (which preserves both the original file and an extract).
## Reading conventions
- **Dates** are ISO 8601: `YYYY-MM-DD`.
- **Citations** typically appear inline as `(<wikilink to source>, p. N, "verbatim quote")` or `(<wikilink to source>, <doc filename>)` for Tier 1; tier label + archive link for Tiers 2–4.
- **Cross-references** between related events use `> See also:` callouts.
- **Contradictions** across sources are flagged with `> [!contradiction]` callouts citing both.
- **Open questions** that web research could resolve are flagged with `> [!web-research-unresolved]`.
- **Exact camera locations** retain the record's source stage—proposal, final engineering plan, issued permit, GIS/MOU, documented installation, current inventory, historical point, or competing variant—rather than collapsing those stages into one deployment claim.
## What's NOT in the wiki
- The raw FOIA productions (held offline; request from the originating Arkansas agency).
- Drafts, maintenance notes, or speculation untethered to documentary evidence.
- Plate values, civilian contact details, residential addresses, signatures, personal device identifiers, requester ID, or material hidden by agency redactions.
- Claims about Arkansas-agency conduct that are not grounded in a Tier-1 production. National technical, legal, and historical context appears only when tier-labeled and locally archived.
Exact fixed-camera coordinates, device and site identifiers, corridor names, and travel directions are intentionally included when an agency record supplies them. See the interactive [[Research Map]], its [[Arkansas Camera Map Data|accessible data register]], and [[Arkansas ALPR Camera Coordinates and Directional Nomenclature]].
## Corrections
Corrections supported by primary documentary evidence are welcome through the publication's established contact channel.
See [[About This Wiki]] for full methodology and source attribution.