How a settlement happens, and how to disagree with one

Nothing has settled yet. This lesson opens with a real settlement when one exists.

A settlement is an editor reading the named source and applying the instruction that was published before the question opened. It is not a judgment about who was right, and it is not a vote. The only question being answered is what the source says under the rule.

That makes a settlement checkable by anyone. Open the question, read the criteria, go to the source, and apply the instruction yourself. If you reach a different answer, one of three things is true: you read the source differently, the instruction is ambiguous, or the settlement is wrong. All three are worth saying, and the second is the most valuable, because an ambiguous instruction will keep producing disputes until it is corrected.

A challenge is not an appeal to fairness. It is a claim that the stated rule, applied to the stated source, gives a different answer — and it is strongest when it quotes both. The settlements this institution has read wrong are kept in public for the same reason the corrections are: a record that hides its misses is not a record.