Civic Atlas Editorial Policy

Guiding principle

The Civic Atlas exists to explore potential connections between different civic activities.

Purpose

The Civic Atlas brings together evidence from multiple sources to develop an evidence-led understanding of civic activity. Its purpose is to explore organisations, places and relationships, and the potential connections between them.

The Atlas is not intended to maximise the amount of information published. Where there is a choice between completeness and responsible publication, the Civic Atlas will favour responsible publication.

Publication

The Civic Atlas is a curated publication, not an exhaustive catalogue of everything it discovers.

The backend Workshop may contain substantially more Discoveries than are published in the Atlas. Publication is an editorial decision about what is useful to expose publicly, rather than a judgement that unpublished Discoveries are invalid or unimportant.

The absence of a Discovery from the public Atlas should therefore not be taken to mean that the Atlas has not found it, or that it has been rejected.

Scope

This policy applies to all editorial content published by Civic Atlas, regardless of how it is produced.

That includes AI-generated analysis, human-written content, automated data processing and editorial revisions.

All contributors – human and AI – should apply these principles when creating, reviewing or publishing material for the Atlas.

1. Evidence before assertion

Every factual statement should be traceable to the supplied evidence.

The Atlas may interpret evidence and identify Patterns by considering existing Discoveries together, but it should always distinguish clearly between:

  • evidence
  • interpretation
  • uncertainty

Readers should be able to understand which conclusions are directly supported and which represent reasonable inference.

2. Appropriate confidence

Confidence reflects the quality of the available evidence, not the importance of the finding.

High confidence should only be used where the evidence directly supports the conclusion.

Where evidence is incomplete, the Atlas should say so openly.

Confidence applies to the Discovery as a whole and should reflect the quality and completeness of the evidence supporting it. A Pattern may be useful and worth publishing even where its underlying evidence does not establish the suggested relationship conclusively.

3. Appropriate geographic precision

The Atlas describes operational geography only to the level needed to understand civic activity.

Its purpose is to explain where organisations operate, not to help readers locate their premises.

Appropriate geographic levels include

  • wards
  • constituencies
  • neighbourhoods
  • towns
  • cities
  • publicly named venues where operationally relevant
  • geographic areas explicitly described in the supplied evidence

The Atlas should not publish

  • postcodes
  • street addresses
  • house numbers
  • directions
  • location-finding information
  • inferred road or street names
  • inferred ward assignments derived from addresses or postcodes
  • explanations of postcode lookups or geocoding
  • geographic details obtained through external lookup tools rather than the supplied evidence

4. Operational geography

Operational geography should describe where an organisation meaningfully operates.

It should not be inferred from administrative information.

In particular:

  • a registered address is not, by itself, evidence of operational activity
  • a correspondence address is not operational evidence
  • a venue used for a single event is not necessarily an operational area
  • a postcode should never be used as evidence of operational geography

Operational geography should reflect evidence of civic activity rather than physical location.

5. Safeguarding and responsible publication

The Atlas should avoid publishing information that could unnecessarily increase risk to individuals, volunteers or service users.

Particular care should be taken when describing organisations working with:

  • children and young people
  • survivors of domestic abuse
  • refugees and asylum seekers
  • people experiencing homelessness
  • people in temporary accommodation
  • vulnerable adults
  • safeguarding services

Where there is doubt, the Atlas should describe activity at a broader geographic level.

6. Evidence over implementation

The Atlas should explain civic understanding, not the process used to generate it.

Readers should never see implementation details such as:

  • postcode lookups
  • geocoding
  • mapping algorithms
  • internal processing steps

Instead, conclusions should be presented only where they are supported by evidence.

7. Honest uncertainty

The Atlas should be comfortable saying:

  • the evidence is incomplete
  • this cannot currently be determined
  • further evidence is required

Uncertainty is preferable to false precision.

8. Editorial consistency

The Atlas should write in a calm, evidence-led voice.

It should avoid:

  • unnecessary certainty
  • exaggerated claims
  • promotional language
  • speculation presented as fact

Its role is to help readers ask better questions about places, not to persuade them of particular conclusions.

Last updated 7 September 2026