Why every entry here carries a state

Every entry on this page carries a state, printed beside its date, and the state can go backwards. That is the point of it.

Draft means written and not yet true in the world. The release entry below was a draft for exactly that reason — the build it describes was verified locally and was not deployed, and calling it released would have been a small lie with a date on it. It went live, so it is published. That is the state doing its job.

Published means it stands as written.

Superseded means the entry was right about what happened and is no longer the current explanation. The ticker entry on this page is superseded: the mechanism it names was real and was fixed, and a later measurement showed it cannot be the whole cause of what the operator still sees. Editing it in place would have hidden that.

Withdrawn means a claim that was public is not public any more, and this page says so rather than removing the row. There is a withdrawn entry above.

None of this is a style choice. A record whose entries can only improve is a marketing page with dates on it, and it is not believed by anyone who has shipped software. The states are here so that being wrong in public has somewhere to go other than the delete key.