A correction protocol decides when a mistake in a telling is interrupted, who may correct it, what evidence a correction needs and how it is recorded. Interrupt at once for errors that could hurt someone, defer the rest to a break, require every correction to cite a second carrier or a reference, and log each error, because an error that repeats at the same place points to a flawed verse, not a careless teller.
Part of Story Circle System
A correction protocol is the set of agreed rules by which a community catches and repairs errors in oral knowledge without discouraging the people who carry it.
Correction Is The Only Thing That Stops Drift From Accumulating
Without correction, each retelling inherits the last teller’s errors and adds its own. Studies of serial retelling, recalled here, show drift as a steady pattern (Narrative Embedding). Correction breaks the chain, but only if the corrector is right and the teller does not give up telling.
What You Need
- A classification of items — FIXED (safety, quantities, law) and FREE (colour, style); the existing Oral Tradition page describes the split
- A signal for objection — raised hand, a word, anything simple and known
- A reference or a second carrier — evidence for every correction
- A log — the error, where in the item, who corrected, ruling
Method: A Four-Part Rule
Step 1: Decide when to interrupt. For FIXED items that affect safety or large cost, any listener interrupts at once. For other FIXED items, note the error and raise it at the break after the telling. For FREE items, do not correct.
Step 2: Say it as a question. “I learned it as such-and-such; which is right?” This invites the reference without accusing the teller.
Step 3: Check against a source. The checker looks at the reference, or asks a second carrier who learned it independently. A correction without a source is a competing memory, not a ruling.
Step 4: Have the teller repeat the corrected line, then the next listener may continue. The act of repeating makes the correction stick.
Step 5: Log the item, the place, the old and new wording and the source.
Step 6: Review the log at each cycle. See the diagnostic below.
Diagnostic: Repeated Errors Mean A Flawed Verse
If the same error appears from different tellers at the same place, the fault is probably in the item and not in the tellers. Common causes:
- a figure placed where a neighbouring figure scans the same way (Rhythm, Rhyme & Song)
- two steps with similar wording that tellers swap
- a story event that makes the wrong version more plausible than the right one
Fix the item, not the teller: rewrite the line, change the peg, move the figure to a refrain.
Common Mistakes
- Blaming the teller. Correction is maintenance. A community that humiliates tellers loses tellers.
- Correcting from status. A senior person’s memory is one carrier. Require a source.
- Correcting a FREE item. It wastes time, and it teaches tellers to freeze.
- False corrections. A listener who is wrong can introduce an error. The source requirement prevents it.
- Silent repair. A correction that is not logged will be reversed by the next teller who learned the old version.
Do not correct a safety quantity by memory alone
If a correction concerns a dose, a quantity or a warning that affects safety, do not settle it by who remembers it more confidently. Use the written reference, or leave the item marked as disputed and use the safer course until it is verified; for how to handle disputes see Verification & Version Control. Doses are never settled by carrier vote.
What’s Next
- Learn next: Verification & Version Control — settling disputes the circle cannot
- Combine with: Mediation — when a correction becomes a personal quarrel