Operator and succession playbook

Purpose

This document is the operating manual for the Quick Response Code reference. It specifies how the site is maintained day to day, how editorial review is conducted, how disputes and corrections are resolved, and how control of the reference is transferred — in planned succession or in emergency — without disturbing the canonical definitions or the ecosystem governance ladder.

1. Custodianship

The site is operated by a single named maintainer at any one time, recorded in the editorial stamp on every page. The maintainer holds custody of the canonical phrase, the editorial charter, the ecosystem layer definitions, and the publication infrastructure. Custody is a stewardship role, not ownership of the underlying concepts.

2. Review cadence

Every page is reviewed on a rolling schedule. Cornerstone pages — the homepage, the pillar hubs, and the ecosystem layer hubs — are reviewed at least quarterly. Knowledge and reference leaves are reviewed at least annually. The review date in the editorial stamp is advanced when the review concludes, regardless of whether the body of the page changed.

3. Change classes

Changes are classified before they are made:

• Editorial. Typography, formatting, link targets, ordering. May be made by the maintainer without external review.
• Substantive. Any change to a canonical definition, ecosystem layer description, standards summary, or historical claim. Requires a recorded source and a refreshed review date.
• Structural. Adding, removing, or relocating a route; renaming an ecosystem layer; changing the governance ladder. Requires the structural-change procedure in §6.

4. Corrections procedure

Corrections are received through the public corrections channel at /reference/corrections. Every submission is logged, classified, and acknowledged. Substantive corrections are either accepted (with the page updated and the review date refreshed), declined (with reasoning recorded), or deferred (pending a cited source). Editorial corrections are applied directly.

5. Dispute resolution

Where a correction is contested, the dispute is resolved by reference to the published standard or to the originating organization named in the editorial charter. The maintainer records the final determination on the affected page and in the corrections log. Standards bodies and named originators take precedence over secondary sources.

6. Structural change procedure

Structural changes — to the route tree, the ecosystem layers, or the governance ladder — are made deliberately. Each structural change records: the route or layer affected; the prior state; the new state; the reason; the date; and the redirects, if any, that preserve link integrity. The sitemap, navigation, and breadcrumbs are updated in the same change.

7. Planned succession

Custody passes to a successor in three stages: notice, handover, and attestation. Notice is recorded on this page and in the editorial stamp at least thirty days before the transfer. Handover transfers operational access — repository, domain, deployment, and the corrections inbox — to the successor and revokes prior access. Attestation is a dated entry on this page in which both outgoing and incoming maintainers record the transfer. The canonical phrase, editorial charter, and ecosystem layers do not change at the transfer.

8. Emergency succession

If the maintainer becomes unavailable without prior notice, an emergency successor — pre-designated and recorded with the registrar and deployment provider — assumes custody. The emergency successor operates under the same charter, posts an attestation entry within thirty days, and conducts no substantive or structural changes for the first ninety days of custody.

9. Continuity of operations

The site is intentionally simple. It is statically rendered, stored in a single source repository, and deployable to any standard host. No dynamic database, third-party platform, or proprietary service is required to keep the reference online. A successor with read access to the repository and registrar can re-establish service from a commodity hosting account within hours.

10. Records preserved across succession

• This playbook and the editorial charter.
• The canonical homepage and all pillar and ecosystem hubs.
• The corrections log and dispute determinations.
• The sitemap and the structural-change record.
• The list of named originators and the citation register.

11. Out of scope

This playbook does not govern the standards it documents. ISO/IEC, JIS, AIM, GS1, and the originating organizations remain the authoritative sources for the Quick Response Code symbology itself. The maintainer of QuickResponseCode.us is custodian of the reference, not of the standard.