Certification

A certified snippet is one that somebody with write access has read and stood behind, and the seal beside it says which.

The seal

A snippet's review state is one of five:

• Certified — somebody certified this text and the certification has not lapsed.
• Needs review — no certification currently stands on it: nobody ever certified it, or its text was saved, its flag cleared, or it was sent back to be read again.
• Needs correction — a member flagged the text as wrong.
• Review expired — it was certified and its review window has passed.
• Moved — a document row only, where that row pins a revision behind the snippet's current one.

The state is derived on every read rather than stored, so no two surfaces disagree: the tree row, the canvas row, the editor's Review band, the worklist and the export pre-flight. Canvas rows, worklist rows and the band print the word; a tree row shows a square in the state's colour, with the word on its hover title and in the row's accessible name.

Certifying

Mark certified is in the editor's Review band and in a snippet's row menu. It needs write access in the workspace, which means a curator or an admin.

It is accepted from Needs review and Review expired only. On a flagged snippet the control is already off and says why — Clear the flag first — a flagged snippet has to be read again. — so a correction is read before it carries a seal again.

The press records who certified it, when, and an expiry computed from the review window.

The second reader

A library can require that whoever certifies a revision is not its author. The editor says so before the press and names the two ways forward: another member who can write there certifies it, or an admin turns the rule off in Settings → Reviews.

Requires: a Shared library. A Personal library always asks for a second reader, and nobody else can see it, so its snippets cannot be certified.

When a certification lapses

Settings → Reviews holds a Review window for each library — between 1 and 720 days, or Never expires. A snippet can carry its own instead: the editor's Expires row has Set for this snippet, and Use the library’s once the snippet has its own.

A change to a window governs the next certification; every expiry already written stays where it is.

Saving a change to a snippet's text sends it back to Needs review: the text somebody certified is no longer the text on screen. Settings → Reviews states that under the window it holds.

Nothing is hidden or pruned by a lapse. An expired snippet stays in the library, stays searchable, assembles and exports exactly as it did, because an expiry is a fact about the text and not a gate on it. A snippet flagged wrong is left out of Live Answers until the flag is cleared, and it still reads, assembles and exports.

Reviewing is how a lapsed snippet gets read again.