Who blocked it

Saying a named living person stopped a bill is the most consequential claim on this site. It is also the most easily done badly. The rules below are the ones that make it publishable.

State the act, not the character

The record says what a person did: held the bill at a named stage, on a named date, by a named mechanism. It does not say what they are, what they wanted, or who they were working for. Motive is an argument; procedure is a record.

Every element carries its own source

Not one citation for the paragraph — a citation for the act, and a citation for the stage. Procedural history is public and it is boring to gather, and the boredom is the entire reason it works: nobody can dispute a committee calendar.

Where the record is thin, it says so

Sometimes it is genuinely known that a bill was held and not reliably known by whom. That is recorded as a gap — the bill died at this stage, and we cannot attribute it — rather than being attributed to whoever was most convenient. A named gap is a real finding. It is also an invitation: it tells a citizen with access to a local archive exactly what would close it.

If you are the subject

There is a correction channel on every record, and a correction from the subject of the record is the correction the movement wants most. Your submission is labelled as coming from you, and it is not refused for that reason. Staff can file on your behalf; the delegation shows as unverified until it is confirmed, and the correction is accepted meanwhile — because requiring the paperwork first means publishing something wrong for longer than necessary.