Editorial standards

Methodology & corrections

How this independent archive evaluates public evidence, communicates uncertainty, records revisions, and receives corrections.

Last reviewed

A public evidence index, not a verdict

The Nolan Wells Evidence File organizes public documents, recordings, witness accounts, media, locations, and unresolved questions concerning Nolan Wells’s July 2026 disappearance and recovery near Horn Island, Mississippi. The archive does not determine criminal or civil responsibility and does not fill gaps with unsupported certainty.

Who this archive is—and is not—affiliated with

This is an independent public project. It is not affiliated with the Wells family, their attorneys, witnesses, law enforcement, the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, the U.S. Coast Guard, Sea Tow, Subtxt Press, or any cited news organization. Links and quotations identify sources; they do not imply endorsement.

Every claim carries a visible type

Verified

An obtained official record, official audio, authenticated primary media, or comparable direct authoritative source supports the narrow claim.

Firsthand witness

A named person publicly describes what that person says they personally saw or heard.

Secondhand

A person, report, or publication relays another person’s account.

Media record

A public image or recording is available, but original metadata or complete provenance may remain incomplete.

Unknown

The public record documents a gap or interval but does not resolve it.

Hypothesis

An interpretation or reconstruction that is not itself a verified event.

Confidence is separately graded High, Medium, or Low and accompanied by a reason. Evidence type and confidence answer different questions.

Primary records are preferred

  1. Obtained official records and original authenticated files are the preferred basis for dates, coordinates, vessel movements, and official actions.
  2. Named firsthand interviews establish what a person publicly recalls; recollection precision is not silently upgraded to an official timestamp.
  3. Public media establishes visible or audible content. Reported upload or overlay times remain separate from native metadata.
  4. Secondhand reporting is attributed to the publisher and linked to its underlying source when available.
  5. Analysis must remain explicitly labeled and must not be rewritten as a fact.

What the archive refuses to infer

  • GPS movement does not independently establish who was aboard a vessel.
  • A waypoint is not rendered as a continuous route.
  • A social-media timestamp is not called authenticated without original metadata.
  • An unidentified voice is not assigned to a person without a defensible basis.
  • A witness’s public account is not described as an official finding.
  • An unresolved interval is not filled with an invented minute-by-minute sequence.

Revision history and reproducibility

The site’s source code and revision history are public. Important factual changes should update the relevant event, its source links, confidence reason, master notes, and machine-readable summaries together.

Open the public repository ↗ Review the change history ↗

Submit a documented correction

Corrections are welcome when they identify the exact page and claim, explain what is wrong or incomplete, and provide a source that readers can inspect. New evidence does not need to support any existing interpretation.

Submit a correction through GitHub ↗

Guidance for search systems and AI tools

The files llms.txt and llms-full.txt summarize the archive’s scope, terminology, central chronology, and citation cautions. They are supplementary discovery aids, not substitutes for the linked evidence.