• conforms_to::[[Gloss Form Contract]]
• authored_by::[[Deep Context Community]]
• has_lifecycle::[[Seed Stage]]
• has_curation::[[Working Draft]]
• in_practice_domain::[[Deep Context Architecture]]

Contested Observation

The epistemic status of an Observation whose claim is under live dispute — the author knows the claim is contested, names the sides of the contest in the Grounds section, and names why the dispute itself is load-bearing for the graph's purposes. A Contested Observation declares has_epistemic_status::[[Contested Observation]] and does not pretend the contest is settled.

The Grounds section of a Contested Observation carries two things an Empirical, Retrospective, or On-Faith Observation does not: a named account of the sides of the contest, and a named account of why the dispute matters here. The graph might carry an Observation that "pattern X is widely regarded as effective" while knowing that a credible community disputes this. The Contested status is how that situation is recorded honestly — both positions visible, the contest itself becoming part of the knowledge rather than being resolved by fiat.

A Contested Observation is not the same as an On-Faith Observation the author doubts. On-Faith means the author accepts an adopted source provisionally; Contested means the author knows there is live disagreement about the claim, and the disagreement itself is what the Grounds documents. The ## What Would Revise It section for a Contested Observation typically names what resolution — empirical evidence, community convergence, a new observation — would retire the contest.

The four epistemic statuses — [[Empirical Observation]], [[Retrospective Observation]], [[On-Faith Observation]], Contested — come from Classify Observations by Epistemic Status With Matched Grounds. Contested is the one status that makes plurality part of the claim rather than a problem to solve.