When it goes to dispute

A dispute is not resolved by what took place. It is resolved by what somebody can put in front of whoever decides, and those two are only related if a record was kept.

That is an uncomfortable thing to read and it is the useful thing to know, because it moves the decisive moment much earlier. The record is either made as things happen or it does not exist, and no amount of being right afterwards produces one retroactively.

• Made at the time, not reconstructed. Reconstructions are shaped by how you feel now.
• Specific about what and when, in terms that will still make sense to somebody who was not there.
• Kept somewhere you will still have access to, which is not the system the dispute is in.
• Boring. A record that argues a case is weaker than one that states what happened.

Records get made when somebody suspects a problem, which is usually after the moment that turns out to matter. By then the early details are gone, and the early details are frequently the decisive ones.

The remedy is a small habit rather than vigilance: note what you did and when, at each stage, as a matter of course. The panel on waiting recommends the same thing for a different reason, which is a hint that it is worth doing generally.

Briefly, factually, once per point, without heat. A dispute is read by somebody with no context and limited patience, and the version that reads as a clear account of events lands better than the version that reads as an argument.

This is not about being nice. It is that a clear account is easier to act on, and whoever is deciding is looking for something they can act on rather than something they have to adjudicate.

It has no idea how any dispute process works anywhere, who decides, what the criteria are, or what outcomes are typical. It has never seen one and holds no data of any kind about them.

What it can say applies to disputes generally, in any setting: the record decides, the record has to be contemporaneous, and the tone of the writing affects how easy it is to act on. Those are structural rather than specific, which is why they are the only things here.

This panel word count, its headed section count, the line of every panel length on the site, and its share of the whole board. Every panel in the orders and money sections has ended up here, and the reason is worth stating once more.

These are the subjects where readers most want figures, and they are exactly the subjects where a board with two narrow data sources has none. A site that filled that gap would be more satisfying to read and would be making things up, and the whole design of this one is a bet that the first is not worth the second.

A record made at the time is useful and it is not proof of anything. It is your account, written by you, and whoever reads it knows that.

The value is not that it convinces. It is that it is specific, contemporaneous and consistent, and those three properties are visible in writing in a way that a reconstruction is not. A reconstruction reads differently even when it is accurate, because it has been shaped by knowing how things turned out.

So the reason to keep one is not that it wins arguments. It is that it stops you being wrong about your own case, which happens more often than people expect and is the fastest way to lose the sympathy of whoever is deciding.

What should I keep a record of?

What you did and when, at each stage, in plain terms. Made at the time, kept somewhere outside the system in question.

Does this board know how disputes are handled?

No. It has never seen one, holds no data about any, and everything here is general rather than specific.