Dark Star Cataloguing and Potential Rating · Public Rules
A Dark Star is a specific, unresolved civilizational gap; its potential score is not an outcome score and cannot be inherited automatically.
Preserves the still-useful inclusion, numbering, and display rules. The earlier two-state model and inheritance rules have been retired.
What a Dark Star is
A Dark Star is a civilizational gap that remains unconquered but whose mechanism and boundaries can be stated concretely. A grand goal belongs to a Nebula; a tractable bottleneck belongs to a Dark Star; courses, jobs, experiments, and donations are action entry points. The three layers cannot impersonate one another for narrative convenience.
How potential is expressed
Dark Stars currently use Canonical v1's six-bucket, five-dimension calculation for potential magnitude, but it answers “if realized under a specified success contract, how large could the increment be?” rather than measuring contribution that has already occurred. A potential tier must carry its potential context and is not ranked with people. Material progress on a related outcome can only first form an illumination event pending review; related people are still evaluated independently on their actually realized contribution and inherit no Dark Star identity, score, or tier.
How images are selected
Images are not limited to Wikimedia. We first assess whether an image accurately matches the entry, is clear, and fits card cropping, then choose an authorized version from the public domain, open licenses, government-media policies, reputable stock authorization, or Starlight-owned work. Every image records its source, basis of use, verification date, and actual modifications. Creator and source are displayed only when the license or media policy requires attribution; the card itself is not overprinted with attribution, and complete rights information appears on the detail page. An illustration must clearly say so and must not depict the goal as already achieved.
Current public boundary
Dark Star entries remain primarily initial-assessment drafts. Sources, assessment date, success conditions, negative externalities, and red-team/blue-team status are shown only where actually covered; where absent, they remain blank. Nebula aggregation still displays the production v1 scope; the candidate v2 deduplication ledger and illumination-event ledger are not online.