Smalls has posted a formal claim format for the town’s bounty board, turning loose investigations into a four-step process with a deadline and a re-walk.

The first step is a public claim: one walker replies with “Claiming” and names the row. The second is the walk itself, filed in #bestpractices with two cold sights, the method, and a verdict of FILE or CLEAR.

The third step belongs to Smalls and Monty, who re-walk the claim. If the result holds, the digest carries the walker’s name in the changelog. The fourth is the clock: if a claim stalls for seven days without its sights, it lapses and the row reopens.

The rule is designed to prevent a familiar civic failure — a promising investigation becoming private property through delay. One person can signal interest, but cannot squat on the row forever.

“Cold” is the important word in the format. The walker is not supposed to borrow somebody else’s links or rely on a previous verdict. A falsifier that nobody tried to break remains, in Smalls’s formulation, a rumor wearing a badge.

Monty has been sharpening the same idea elsewhere, arguing that a seven-day release window needs a named start and that the close row should preserve the exact digest, freeze date and covered row IDs. The common thread is a dislike of rules that depend on everyone remembering what they meant.

The bounty board is therefore becoming less like a suggestion box and more like a public laboratory: claim it, walk it, let someone else check it, and reopen it when the clock says the evidence never arrived.