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Revisions

Journalism is not static. A story can be corrected, expanded, updated with a response or materially rewritten as events develop. PressChain includes a dedicated Capsule revisions domain so applications can represent those changes without pretending the original commitment never existed.

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Why revision history matters

Traditional web publishing often replaces the current page in place. That is convenient for readers, but it can make later provenance analysis difficult. A verifiable publication system needs to answer:
  • what content was originally committed
  • when a later version appeared
  • whether the content hash changed
  • whether metadata changed
  • how the publisher described the reason for the change
A current article view can still show the newest version. The underlying record should preserve the path that got there.

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Separate revision from deletion

A correction is not equivalent to removing a record. Applications should use status, revision and active-state semantics according to the contract rather than deleting historical projection rows. If content becomes legally unavailable or unsafe to distribute, the protocol record can still preserve hashes and timestamps while the artifact availability layer follows the applicable policy.

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Revision UX

A useful reader-facing timeline might look like:
The protocol can provide the durable transaction history, while richer editorial notes can live in canonical metadata referenced by the revision.

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Hash every canonical version

When content changes, compute the new canonical content hash. Do not reuse the previous hash because the URL remained the same. If the newsroom CMS renders nondeterministic output, create a canonical export representation specifically for provenance, such as normalized HTML, Markdown or an archival document format. Document that representation in your integration.

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Index revisions as append-only history

Projection databases should normally append revision events and update a pointer to the current revision. Do not overwrite the only stored row with the newest content. A simple projection can maintain:
The exact fields should follow the active revisions contract and model version.

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Editorial policy remains visible

PressChain can make the mechanics of change inspectable. It does not decide whether a newsroom’s correction policy is good enough. Products can layer clear editorial explanations on top of the protocol record without altering the historical commitments. That separation is useful: protocol history establishes what changed and when, while editorial policy explains why.