How we hear, and how we change the deck.

Where to write.

Email [email protected]. Anyone can write, subscriber or not, participant or facilitator. No account required.

What helps us hear well.

Tell us which image (plate number or rough description). Tell us what you noticed. You don't have to make the case in academic language; lived observation is enough.

Response timeframe.

Acknowledged within seven days. Initial decision within 30 days. The curator reviews personally; this is not a ticket queue.

The curator reviews.

John Weng reads every flag personally. Where the issue is outside his cultural fluency, he routes to a Round-2 respondent from the relevant context before deciding.

Three outcomes.

An image can be removed from the deck, kept with revised context or framing, or kept as-is with an explanation of why. Each outcome is logged with reasoning.

Removal is total.

When we remove an image, we remove it everywhere: the public library, all pre-formed Selections, future deck builds. Images already saved in facilitators' decks remain there until they refresh.

Cross-cultural portability is bounded, not universal.

Aperture's theoretical claim is that projection works across cultures; it does not claim that every image is read identically across cultures. The validation protocol routes Round-2 respondents outside the curator's home context to surface what travels and what doesn't.

The respondent pool is growing.

The empirical claim is bounded by the international composition of the people who have validated each image. As the pool grows, the claim sharpens. We don't pretend it's already complete.

We don't interpret what respondents see.

Aperture's structural refusal: meaning travels with the respondent, not with the image. We curate which images enter the deck; we do not assign what they mean.

Public and timestamped.

Every decision (removed, revised, kept) is logged with a date, the plate identifier, and a brief reasoning. The requester's identity is never published.

Published quarterly.

The log is updated every 90 days. Summary appears in the annual transparency report.

If you disagree with a decision.

Reply to the response with your reasoning. The curator re-reviews. Where the disagreement holds, a second outside-context respondent is consulted before final disposition.

No silence.

Every appeal receives a response. Disagreement is part of the work; we don't treat it as conflict to be managed.