Orrery

Provenance + credits backlog ​

This file is the rolling backlog for provenance, attribution, and credits ideas that are not yet shipped. ADR-047 ("Provenance manifests + license stewardship") locked the data model and pipeline; this list keeps the next-step ideas in one place so they don't get lost as scattered TODOs across the codebase.

Add new ideas here rather than as inline // TODOs. When an item ships, move its bullet into the relevant ADR (047 or a successor) and delete it here.

Cadence ​

  • [ ] Per-locale staleness check. A linter that flags when static/data/i18n/en-US/missions/<id>.json has changed in the last N commits but the corresponding es/, de/, … overlay has not. Surface the result in validate-data so a translator can pick up the diff in the next sweep.
  • [ ] Periodic Wikimedia category sweep. A weekly job that hits Commons categories likely to contain new mission imagery (e.g. Category:Photographs by Mars Express, Category:Chang'e_5_mission, Category:JWST images) and writes candidate filenames into a "new since last sweep" digest under docs/provenance/sweeps/YYYY-MM-DD.md. Maintainers can promote candidates into WIKIMEDIA_*_GALLERY lists by hand.
  • [ ] Weekly link-check GH Action. HEAD-checks every source_url in image-provenance.json and text-sources.json. Failures open or update a tracking issue automatically; the run report is committed under docs/provenance/link-checks/YYYY-MM-DD.md. Keeps "the source URL still works" honest as upstream pages move.
  • [ ] PR comment hook. On every PR that touches static/images/**, static/textures/**, static/logos/**, or any provenance manifest, post the last-fetch-diff.md digest as a PR comment so reviewers see the attribution delta without opening files.
  • [ ] Diff-report drift sentinel. Today the diff report is informational. Promote it to fail-closed: if a previously-shipped manifest entry loses its license_short, author, or revid between runs, the build fails until the entry is reviewed.

Detection / regression ​

  • [ ] Sentry breadcrumb when a UI lightbox renders without provenance. Helps detect drift between the manifest and on-disk images at runtime in the wild — e.g. a CDN cache hands the user an image we removed from the manifest. Wire as a single console.warn + Sentry breadcrumb.
  • [ ] Playwright visual regression on /credits. Snapshots of the en-US /credits page and one non-English locale, sized for mobile + desktop. Fails when grouping or layout changes silently.
  • [ ] Type-level guarantee on i18n keys for credits. Today credits_* keys are just strings; a new section without an i18n key compiles silently. A lint rule (or a test that walks pathToRouteKey outputs and asserts each maps to an m.credits_used_route_* function) catches that drift.

Authoring + ownership ​

  • [ ] CODEOWNERS entry. Require owner review on changes to static/data/image-provenance.json, static/data/text-sources.json, static/data/source-logos.json, static/data/license-waivers.json, and any file under static/images/**. Light-weight: prevents single-developer license waiver merges.
  • [ ] Authoring contract in PR template. Add a checkbox on the default PR template: "If this PR adds a new image, planet/mission/site description, or external text fragment, did you update the matching manifest?"
  • [ ] scripts/check-provenance-drift.ts. A pre-push hook that runs build-image-provenance --dry-run and fails if image-provenance.json would change. Stops the case where someone hand-edits an image without re-running the manifest builder.

Public credits surface ​

  • [ ] Search / filter on /credits. Filter by source, license, type (photo/text), category. Useful once the manifest grows past ~600 photos; defer until that's a problem.
  • [ ] Per-source ?source=nasa deep links. Today the page uses anchor links. Adding query-param deep links makes individual source sections shareable.
  • [ ] Pagination / virtualization — the page is plain HTML lists today. Revisit when render time crosses ~250 ms on the smallest target device.
  • [ ] Per-image lightbox on /credits thumbs. Right now thumbs link out to the original Commons page; a lightbox-style modal could keep users in-app and still preserve the source link.
  • [ ] Author-level credit lines. Where author is a Wikimedia username, link it to the Commons user page instead of just rendering the username.

Coverage gaps ​

  • [ ] Backfill per-mission text-sources entries. The current text-sources.json ships with category-baseline entries plus the highest-profile per-mission rows (Apollo 11, Curiosity, Mars Express, Hope, Chandrayaan-3). Extend coverage to all 36 missions, ~9 planets, ~24 moon sites, ~17 earth objects, and ISS modules so each entity has its primary-source attribution row.
  • [ ] Reviewer ids on translations. translation_status exists in the schema but most translations don't yet record a translation_reviewer. Define the convention (GitHub handle? human name?) and backfill.
  • [ ] Locale-specific source notes. Localised overlays may paraphrase from a locale's primary press kit (e.g. ISRO Hindi-language press kit for Chandrayaan). Add an overlay_locale field on text-sources.json entries to record that.

Out of scope (intentional) ​

  • Runtime imagery hops. ADR-016 still rules; live agency calls at view time are not on the table.
  • Per-photo CC-BY chain of custody on social shares. When /credits is link-shared, the page itself credits the source. We do not stamp share thumbnails individually.

Updated when ideas land or new ideas surface. Cite this file from PRs that defer provenance work.

Orrery — architecture documentation · MIT · No tracking

© Marko Dragoljević and contributors