For employers: how to read a record =================================== Tillyard. Version 1.2. In effect from October 21, 2026. Fingerprint of this text (SHA-256): ece05966f53cafc6fecf3c46fa647205d3884e9775726ec881cd06b924bb1f3d This version: https://tillyard.org/policies/for-employers-how-to-read-a-record/v/1.2 A résumé in front of you mentions Tillyard and carries a link or a ten-character code. Tillyard is not open to students yet, so no student record pages exist yet. If a résumé offers one now, tell us at support@tillyard.org. This page tells you what you will find behind it, how to read it, and where its limits are. You do not need an account to check a record, it costs nothing, and it takes about a minute. - A record page says what a member did at Tillyard, when, and exactly who confirmed it. It is published at the member's request and shows its status on the day you open it. - The person was never our employee or contractor. Nobody here assigned, supervised or paid for what they did. Only a member of the separate, unpaid Tillyard Internship program is an intern, for one term, and their Record says so. We have no dates of employment to confirm and we give no references. - To check a record, open the link, scan the QR code, or type the ten-character code at tillyard.org/verify. A genuine record page lives only at an address beginning tillyard.org/r/. A screenshot or a PDF is a picture of one day. - Items come in three kinds. Approved: the editor approved or signed it. Recorded: our logs show it, or the people named on the page confirmed it. Self-reported: the member said so and nobody checked. Self-reported items have no record page. - Read the "how we know" sentence literally. "Read by three students at other colleges and approved by the editor" means three members and one editor. Each of the three confirmed an email address at another college and told us they were a student or recent graduate; we do not check enrolment. Tillyard Research is a student publication. It is not a peer-reviewed journal. - Only "active" is a confirmation. "No longer listed" tells you nothing either way. "Withdrawn" means the record no longer stands. - A record does not say how good anyone is at anything. We give no grades, levels, scores or certificates, and we rank nobody. - "Verified .edu email, checked [month and year]" means a college mailbox answered a code that month. It does not prove enrolment, age or identity. - The page is the whole of what we say. We do not confirm records by phone, email or letter, and we do not fill in verification forms. - How much weight to give a record is yours to judge. We are a new, small company. Open the work and read it. If this summary and the full text below ever differ, the full text governs. Section 1.3 says which documents govern this page. 1. About this page ================== 1.1 Who is speaking ------------------- Tillyard is an Ohio nonprofit corporation. In this page we, us and our mean Tillyard, and the site means the website at tillyard.org. 1.2 Who this page is for ------------------------ Anyone checking a claim that mentions us: a recruiter, a hiring manager, a human-resources or background-screening professional, an admissions reader, a scholarship committee, a professor, a career adviser. We say "employer" and "candidate" throughout because that is the usual case. The same reading applies whoever you are. 1.3 What kind of page this is ----------------------------- This page explains. It adds no rules. The Record and Verification Policy governs what a record page says and how records are corrected and withdrawn, and the Terms of Use govern use of the site. If this page and one of those differ, that document governs. Record pages are built from fixed wording and from our records. Where this page quotes a sentence from a record page, the wording on the page itself is what counts. 1.4 Words we use ---------------- This page adds no rules of its own. Section 37.5 of the Terms of Use says how our documents fit together, and where this page differs from the document it explains, that document governs. Words that have one meaning in every one of our documents, such as member, visitor, staff, the editor, record item, hold, case and tip, are defined in Definitions. The words below are added for this document's own subject, or repeated from Definitions for convenience. If a repeated meaning ever differs, Definitions governs the meaning of the word. - A member is a person with an account. A candidate is a member whose résumé you are reading. - The Record is a member's set of items. An item is one thing the member did. A record page is the public page for one item. - Staff means the owner and any person who works for us under a paid, written contract and holds a staff account. At present the owner is the only member of staff. Members are never staff, and no member is given any power over another member's content or account, whatever title or history that member has. The editor is the member of staff who decides whether a paper is published and who approves or signs titles. At present the owner is the editor and is the only member of staff. - How we know is the sentence on a record page that names the source of the record. - Status is the word on a page that says whether the record stands today. - A code is the ten-character code that comes with an item, shown as two groups of five, for example 7K4MQ-2XPDZ. - A public page is a member's optional profile page, at an address beginning tillyard.org/m/. 2. Who we are, and what the candidate's relationship with us was ================================================================ 2.1 Who we are -------------- Tillyard is a website where adult college students work alongside each other in a text-only coffee shop, write papers for a student publication called Tillyard Research, build projects together, host scheduled study tables, and keep a record of what they did. One person, the owner, runs Tillyard day to day. That person is also the editor. It is free to students today. We show no advertising. There are no recruiter accounts, and no employer pays us for access to members or to their records. We are not a school, an employer, an accrediting body or an honor society, and we are not affiliated with or endorsed by any college or university. What Tillyard is goes through each of these. 2.2 Who the members are ----------------------- A member joined with an email address at a United States college on our list and proved that the mailbox answered. They stated that they were 18 or older and a current student or recent graduate. We check the mailbox. We take the rest on the member's word. The Eligibility and Verification Policy sets this out, and section 9 below says what the college email line on a page does and does not mean. 2.3 The relationship -------------------- The candidate was a member of a website. They were not our employee, intern, trainee, fellow, contractor, agent or representative, and no title on their Record changes that. - They chose everything. We assign no topics, tasks, hours, deadlines or targets. - Nobody supervised them. There is no supervisor to call and no evaluation on file. - Nobody paid them. That goes for money and for anything in kind. - Their work is theirs. A member owns what they make. We hold a limited licence to display it. Every record page for an approved or recorded item carries a fixed sentence saying that the member was not an employee, intern or contractor of Tillyard. So please do not record us as a previous employer, and do not send us an employment-verification request. There was no employment. If a résumé lists us under Experience or calls the activity an internship, the résumé is wrong on that point, and section 12 says what you can do. 3. How to check a record ======================== 3.1 From a link --------------- Open it. A genuine record page has an address that begins tillyard.org/r/ followed by a long random string. If the address in your browser begins with anything else, the page is not ours, however it looks. 3.2 From a QR code ------------------ Scan it. Your phone will show an address before it opens the page. Check that it begins tillyard.org/r/. Members are told to keep the address or the code in text beside a QR code, so you should not have to trust a picture. 3.3 From a code on paper ------------------------ Go to tillyard.org/verify and type the ten characters. Capitals or not, with or without the hyphen. You land on the same page the link would have opened. - Codes use capital letters and digits and never use 0, 1, I, L, O or U, so a character read from paper cannot be confused with another. - The last character is a check character. If one character is mistyped, the form says so before it looks anything up. - If we have no item with that code, the form says so in one neutral sentence. It gives the same answer for every miss. - The form sits behind a bot check, and lookups from one place are limited (currently 20 an hour). If you are checking many résumés, use the full links. A code belongs to one item. It does not encode the member's name and it does not search for people. 3.4 From the page for recruiters -------------------------------- The site has a short page headed "How to read a record" with a box that takes a link or a code and a marked-up specimen page. That box only opens a record. It does not search for people either. 3.5 What to confirm when the page opens --------------------------------------- 1. The address begins tillyard.org/r/. 2. The name on the page is the candidate's name. 3. The item and its facts match the line on the résumé: the title, the numbers, the dates. 4. How we know says who confirmed it. Read that sentence literally (section 6). 5. The status reads "Active", with today's date beside it (section 8). If all five hold, the record stands as the page describes, today. 3.6 Keeping a copy ------------------ You may print a record page or save it for your file. The page has a print control. Note the date: a printout is a picture of the page on that day, and the status can change afterwards. If a decision is made later, open the link again. 3.7 Things that are not a check ------------------------------- - A screenshot, a saved PDF or a forwarded image. These can be out of date and can be edited. Ask for the link or the code. - The printed "Record of activity". A member can print a document listing their items, each with its "how we know" sentence and its code. It is made by the member's own browser. We do not store a copy and we do not sign it. Use the codes on it to open the pages; do not rely on the paper. - A member's public page. A page at tillyard.org/m/ is a profile the member built. Items on it link to their record pages, and those are the records. The same page can also carry a section headed "Self-reported" and a section headed "Taking part", and section 5.3 explains why neither is a record. - Searching for the candidate by name. We have a directory, and it lists only members who chose to be listed. Most have not. At present only signed-in members can search it. Not finding someone tells you nothing. - Calling or writing to us. We do not confirm individual records off the page (section 13). 3.8 Cost, accounts and the tip link ----------------------------------- Checking a record needs no account and costs nothing. You may notice a link at the foot of a page inviting a tip. It has nothing to do with the record. A tip is a voluntary payment to Tillyard, and no record changes because of one. 4. The parts of a record page ============================= A record page for an approved or recorded item has these parts, in this order. The parts of a record page. Columns: part, what it is, how to read it. Part | What it is | How to read it ---------------------------------- The code | Ten characters in two groups of five | It should match the code on the résumé, if one is printed there The title and one sentence | The name of the item and a statement of what was done | This is the claim The mark | The editor's mark, reading "Approved by the editor" or "Signed by the editor"; or a ruled mark reading "Recorded" | It tells you the kind of item (section 5). A recorded item also carries the line "Recorded by Tillyard. Nobody judged the quality of this activity." Who | The member's name. Their college, if they chose to show it. The college email line | The name is the member's current name on the site. The college email line is explained in section 9 What | The facts, each with a label | Numbers are counts. No page shows a score, a grade, a level or a rank When | Dates, to the day or the month | Never a time of day How we know | One or two sentences naming the source | The most important part of the page. Section 6 Status | A sentence with the day's date, for example "Active on 10 October 2026." | Section 8 What this page does and does not say | A fixed statement the member cannot edit | It restates the claim and the source, says the activity was unpaid and the member's own choice, says the member was not an employee, intern or contractor of Tillyard, and says what kind of company we are Check it yourself | The QR code, the address in text, and where to type the code | So that you can confirm you are on the genuine page Links at the foot | An explanation of The Record, and a link for reporting a problem with the page | Use the second if something looks wrong A member cannot write or edit any of this. The words come from fixed wording and from our records, and the counts come from logs, not from what a member types. A page never shows the reasons for a decision, whether the member has ever been reported or suspended, a former name, a photograph, a date of birth or an age, contact details, or how many people have opened it. 5. The three kinds of item ========================== 5.1 Side by side ---------------- Side by side. Columns: what to compare, approved, recorded, self-reported. What to compare | Approved | Recorded | Self-reported ----------------------------------------------------- How the page marks it | The editor's mark: "Approved by the editor" or "Signed by the editor" | A ruled mark reading "Recorded" | The words "Self-reported" Who stands behind it | The editor, who is our staff | Our own logs, or the people named on the page: students who chose to look, members who took part, an officer of the organization, a contact outside the site | The member alone What it tells you | The facts on the page are what our records show, and the editor approved or signed the item on the basis the page gives | Our logs show the activity, or the people named confirmed it, as the page says | That the member told us What it does not tell you | That the work is correct or free of error. That an expert reviewed it. That the member has any level of skill | That our staff looked at it. That it was done well. That the people confirming have no interest in the outcome | Anything. Nobody checked Has a record page and a code | Yes | Yes | No One kind never becomes another. A member cannot turn a self-reported item into a recorded one, or a recorded one into an approved one, by editing or sharing it. 5.2 Why self-reported items have no page ---------------------------------------- A page at our address for a claim nobody checked would lend it our name. So a self-reported item has no record page, no code and no QR code. If a résumé offers a Tillyard link or code for something, and the link opens an active record page, the item is approved or recorded. If a candidate points you to their public page as support for something listed there under "Self-reported", it is their own statement and nothing more. Where a member lists something another body issued, such as a licence or a test result, the public page shows it as "[Name] reports holding [what], issued by [whom]". We did not check it. Use the issuer's own way of checking. 5.3 Things on a public page that are not items ---------------------------------------------- A member's public page can show other things beside items. Each is labelled. - "Taking part": counts, such as visits to the coffee shop in a term. The page says they were counted by Tillyard and are not Record items. - Keepsakes: stamps, mugs, founding numbers and postmarks. They are marks for showing up. They are not credentials, they cannot be exchanged for anything, and no number of them produces a title. - Skills: each skill is a link to the recorded items that involved it. The page says "Skills are not tested here." A skill on a page is not a rating. - Headline, "About" and interests: the member's own words. We do not check them. 6. Reading "how we know" literally ================================== Each page names its source in exact words. The sentence means what it says and no more. The table gives the sentences in use at present, what happened for each, and what did not. Reading "how we know" literally. Columns: the page says, what happened, what did not happen. The page says | What happened | What did not happen --------------------------------------------------- "Read by three students at other colleges and approved by the editor." (The number is the true number of readings and can be two.) | Members who had chosen to read were each offered the paper without the author's name. Currently an offer goes to a member at a different college who is not connected to the author. Each returned a reading against a published rubric. The editor then read the paper and the readings and decided to publish it | No expert in the field reviewed it. No faculty member was involved. The readers did not have to agree. Nobody found that the paper is correct, original or free of error "Approved by the editor." (with no mention of readers) | Fewer than two readings came back. The editor read the paper and decided to publish it | Student readings did not play a part worth stating "The readers read the first version. The editor approved the revision." | The author revised after the readings, and the editor approved the revised text | The readers did not read the final text "Chosen from readers' scores for the term and confirmed by the editor.", with a count such as "One of the 3 papers picked from the 23 read by students that term, confirmed by the editor." (Readers' Selection is not running at present.) | A published rule worked out a list from student readers' scores. The editor confirmed it, and may leave a paper out but does not add one | No panel ranked the papers. The papers did not all have the same readers. There was no prize. No score is shown "Hosted tables counted from the attendance log and signed by the editor." | The member asked for the title. The log showed hosted tables in the numbers we publish for one term. The editor looked at the counts and signed | Nobody observed the tables or judged how they went. The member did not hold a role with us "Counted from Tillyard's own attendance logs. Nobody typed these numbers in." | The site counted who held a seat at scheduled tables | Nothing is recorded about what was said or learned, or how well the host ran it "Counted from Tillyard's own logs." (papers read) | The site counted readings the member returned | Nothing about the quality of the readings or their effect on any decision "Scored by three other entrants against the published criteria. Tillyard added up the scores and judged nothing." ("Scored blind" where the round was blind.) | In a round whose rules said so before anyone entered, entrants scored each other's entries. We did the arithmetic | There was no judge and no expert. The scorers were entrants in the same round. There was no prize "Two students at other colleges opened it and typed what they found. Tillyard did not check it itself." | Two members who chose to look opened the piece and typed what they observed: a number, a quoted line, a result | They did not assess its quality. We did not open it A sentence naming what an outside party did, such as "The project's maintainers merged it", then "One student at another college opened the public record and typed what they found." | The outside party's act is the fact. One member confirmed that the public record shows it | We have no connection with the outside party. We did not review the work "Each entry was dated by Tillyard on the day it was written and could not be changed after 24 hours. What the entries say is the member's own account." | The dates are ours and are real | We checked nothing the entries say "Confirmed by 3 members who worked on it. Tillyard did not check the work itself." | Each teammate separately confirmed the part the member said they did | Teammates are not strangers to each other. We did not inspect the project "Confirmed by an officer of the organization. Tillyard did not check this itself." | Another officer of the same student organization confirmed the role and dates | The college did not confirm it. We did not. The confirmer is a fellow student "Confirmed by [name], [role], [organization], on [date], from an @[organization's domain] address. Tillyard did not check who this person is beyond that address." | Someone who could receive mail at that organization's domain opened the claim, typed their own name and role, and confirmed it | We did not check that person's identity, role or authority to speak for the organization "Unverified contact: Tillyard did not check who this person is." | A person confirmed the claim without proving an address at the organization, or from a free mail provider | Nothing ties the confirmer to the organization. Treat it as the member's claim with an unknown person's agreement "Students also hold addresses at this college." | The confirming address is at a college domain | The confirmer may be a student and not an employee of the college "Confirmed by a contact at [organization] who asked not to be named." | As above, and the contact chose not to be named | You cannot tell from the page who it was One line about the organization: "Organization not yet checked."; or that it was listed as tax-exempt when we looked it up on a stated date; or that it is a public body; or that we looked on a stated date and did not find it on the public list of tax-exempt organizations, with the note that some real charities are not on that list | A lookup against a public list, on the date given | We did not vet the organization, and being named does not make it our partner "Two students at other colleges opened the public link on [date] and typed what it showed: the account, the date and the state of the change. The project's own reviewers accepted it; Tillyard did not review the work." | A contribution to a public project was accepted by that project. Two members confirmed the public page shows it | We did not review the contribution and have no connection with the project "Two students at other colleges opened the link and found the licence and author as stated." | An open resource the member published carries the licence and the author's name the member said it did | Nobody assessed the resource Watch for what a sentence leaves out as well as what it says. Where a page says "two students" and not "two students at other colleges", the students who looked may be at the member's own college. The page drops the words when they would not be true. Some pages also carry a fixed label that the member cannot remove, such as "Student exercise. Not advice to anyone." on a piece touching law, tax, medicine, engineering or investments; "unsolicited concept, not commissioned or endorsed" on a design made around a real organization; or "minor" on a small contribution. Take the label at its word. Words we do not use, so you can treat them as a warning if you see them beside our name: "verified" with nothing after it, "independently" checked, "audited", "outside reviewers", "peer-reviewed", "certified", "accredited". The one fixed use of "verified" on the site is the college email line, which says what was checked and when. 7. Item by item =============== 7.1 Published Author -------------------- What it tells you. The candidate wrote a paper that was published in Tillyard Research on the date shown. The page says how many students read it. The editor read it and decided to publish it. What it does not tell you. That the paper is right. That a scholar in the field has seen it. Tillyard Research is a student publication and is not a peer-reviewed journal. It costs nothing to submit a paper or to have one published. Worth doing. The record page links to the paper. Read it. The paper's own page shows how many students read it, when the editor approved it, what the author declared about help from AI tools, and whether the author said it was made for a class, a lab or on their own initiative. Then ask the candidate about it. A person who wrote a paper can talk about what they found and what they would do differently. 7.2 Readers' Selection ---------------------- What it tells you. A paper by the candidate was picked, by a published rule applied to readers' scores, from the papers read in one term, and the page gives the number picked and the number eligible. Readers' Selection is not running at present, so you should not yet meet one. What it does not tell you. A rank. A score. That experts chose it. That every paper had the same readers. There is no prize, and it is not membership of an honor society. 7.3 Table Host -------------- What it tells you. In one named term the candidate hosted scheduled study tables in the numbers we publish (currently four tables in a term, each with three or more guests, and six different people across them), and the editor signed the title from the attendance log. What it does not tell you. That the candidate held a role with us, worked for us or spoke for us. That the tables were good. A host is a member who chose to host. A host has no schedule, no target and no authority over anyone. 7.4 A term of hosting, a series, a circle or a talk --------------------------------------------------- What it tells you. The site's attendance log counted tables the candidate hosted and the people who came. What it does not tell you. Anything about quality. Nobody on our staff looked. A series of tables is not a course, and the people who came were not taught, tested or graded. 7.5 Papers read for other members --------------------------------- What it tells you. A count of readings the candidate returned on other students' papers. This item starts out private, so if you are seeing it the candidate chose to share it. What it does not tell you. That the candidate is a peer reviewer, a referee or an editor. The editor decides every paper. 7.6 A round entry, or a finalist's line --------------------------------------- What it tells you. The candidate entered a round with a set prompt, and other entrants scored the entry against published criteria. A finalist's line gives the number of finalists and the number of entries. What it does not tell you. That a judge or an expert assessed it. There was no prize. The prompts are written by us and are never set for a business. 7.7 A portfolio piece --------------------- What it tells you. What two students at other colleges found when they opened the piece. The page says what they did: opened it, ran its tests, re-derived a figure, followed a tutorial to its stated result. What it does not tell you. That anyone assessed its quality, or that we looked at it. Worth doing. Open the piece. It is usually hosted somewhere else, at a fixed reference. 7.8 A piece resting on something an outside party did ----------------------------------------------------- What it tells you. An outside party did something in public: a project's maintainers merged a contribution, an outlet's editor published an op-ed, an event listed a poster. One student opened the public record and typed what they found there. What it does not tell you. Anything about our view of the work. We have no connection with the outside party. The public record is the evidence, and you can open it yourself. 7.9 A dated log --------------- What it tells you. The dates of the entries are real. The site stamped each on the day it was written and locked it after 24 hours. What it does not tell you. Whether what the entries say is true. This item starts out private. 7.10 A team project ------------------- What it tells you. The candidate worked on a named project with a stated number of other students, and a stated number of them separately confirmed the candidate's part. We recorded when the team sat down to work together. What it does not tell you. That the work is good, or that we checked it. The project belongs to the people who made it. A line marked "disputed" means a teammate has contested it. Worth asking. "What was your part, and what did the others do?" The candidate's answer should match the part the page states. 7.11 An officer role in a student organization ---------------------------------------------- What it tells you. Another officer of the same organization confirmed the candidate's role and dates. What it does not tell you. That the college confirmed it, or that we did. The organization is not a chapter of Tillyard, and its college has no connection with us. 7.12 Service for a charity or a public body ------------------------------------------- What it tells you. A contact at the organization confirmed that the candidate did the stated work, unpaid, over the stated dates. The page says who confirmed, in what role, and from what kind of email address, and carries one line about the organization itself. What it does not tell you. That we arranged, directed or supervised the work. We did none of those. The candidate arranged it with the organization. We did not check the contact's identity beyond the address, and the page says so. The page does not state hours. 7.13 A contribution to a public project, an open resource, peer help tables --------------------------------------------------------------------------- These read as their "how we know" sentences say (section 6). A contribution was accepted by the project's own reviewers. A resource carries the licence stated. Help tables were counted from the attendance log. 7.14 Anything self-reported --------------------------- It has no record page. If you see it, you are on the candidate's public page or looking at their printed document, under a heading that says nobody at Tillyard checked it. Treat it as you would any line on a résumé. 8. Status: whether the record stands today ========================================== 8.1 The four things a page can say ---------------------------------- Record pages are produced when you ask for them. Each shows the status on the day you open it. The four things a page can say. Columns: the page says, what it means, what to take from it. The page says | What it means | What to take from it ---------------------------------------------------- "Active on [today's date]." | The record stands today | The item is confirmed as the page describes "This item is no longer listed" | The page is not being shown. The member may have stopped sharing it, or it may be unavailable for another reason. The page never says which | Nothing either way. This page does not confirm the item today, and its absence says nothing against the item or the person. Ask the candidate for a current link "This item was withdrawn", with a month | The record no longer stands | Do not rely on the item. The page does not say who withdrew it or why, and we do not publish that "Nothing is listed here" | No item has this address or code | Check the address or the code against the résumé. A single mistyped character is the usual cause Only "active" is a confirmation. 8.2 Why "no longer listed" carries no meaning --------------------------------------------- A page reads "no longer listed" in several quite different situations: the member set the item to private, the member put the item away, the item is hidden while a report or dispute is looked at, the member's account is paused, closing or closed, or a title was retired because its holder left. The page gives no name and no reason, and it is worded so that you cannot tell these apart. Most often the member has simply left the item private and forgotten that the link on an old résumé would stop working. Please do not draw a conclusion about a person from this page. 8.3 What "withdrawn" covers --------------------------- A page reads "withdrawn" when the record itself no longer stands. The member may have withdrawn the thing, for example a paper they no longer stand behind. The area of the site it came from may have withdrawn it under its rules. Our staff may have withdrawn it. The page is the same in every case: the word, a month, and nothing else. A member cannot hide a withdrawal by making the item private or by closing their account. We do not tell you which of these happened, even if you ask. If it matters to a decision, ask the candidate. 8.4 Notes that can appear on an active page ------------------------------------------- An item can stand and still carry a note. - "Disputed": someone named on the item, such as a teammate, has contested a line of it. - "Link changed since it was read": the member edited an outside link after it was read, and it has not been read again. - "Confirmation withdrawn": an outside person has taken back a confirmation. Where that was the only basis for the item, the item no longer stands as confirmed. 8.5 What status never shows --------------------------- - Suspension. A suspension concerns taking part in the site. It changes nothing on a member's record pages. You cannot tell from any page whether a member has ever been reported, warned or suspended, and an active page does not mean they have not been. - A lapsed email check. That changes the wording of the college email line (section 9). It is not a status and withdraws nothing. 8.6 After an account is erased ------------------------------ When a member's account is erased, the address and code of each record page keep answering for a time (currently 36 months) with "no longer listed" or "withdrawn" and nothing about the person. After that they answer "Nothing is listed here". We do this so that a link on an old résumé gives an honest answer. 8.7 We cannot tell you if a record changes ------------------------------------------ We keep nothing about who opened a page, so we have no means of telling you when a record you looked at is later corrected or withdrawn. The live page is the only place the current status appears. If a decision depends on a record, open it again on the day. 9. The college email line ========================= 9.1 What the college email line says ------------------------------------ Under "Who", a record page carries a line in this form: "Verified .edu email, checked March 2027". It means that in the month shown, a code sent to an address at that college was typed back into the site. Someone could receive mail at a mailbox at that college that month. That is all it means. 9.2 What it does not say ------------------------ It does not say that we confirmed the member's identity, age, enrolment, major, year, grades, degree or standing with the college. We do not contact colleges, and colleges tell us nothing. Colleges issue addresses to people who are not degree students, and some keep graduates' mailboxes open for years. 9.3 When it reads differently ----------------------------- Members are asked to repeat the check about once a year. If a member does not, the line changes to say when the address was last checked, for example "School email last checked October 2026". That happens to most members some time after they graduate, when the college closes the mailbox. It says nothing about the member's conduct and withdraws nothing from their Record. 9.4 Which college is shown -------------------------- The college under "Who" appears only if the member chose to show it, and it is the member's college on the day you open the page. It is not necessarily the college they attended when the item was recorded. Where the college matters to the item, as with an organization role or a paper's byline, the item's own facts name the college as it was then. 9.5 If you need to confirm enrolment or a degree ------------------------------------------------ Ask the college, in whatever way that college provides, with the candidate's permission where that is needed. We cannot help with this and a record page is no substitute for it. 10. What a record does not tell you =================================== Taken together, a record page does not tell you any of the following. - That the candidate worked for us. They did not. - How good they are at anything. We do not test, grade or rate members. Nothing we publish says a member has reached a level of skill, knowledge or proficiency, has completed a course, or has passed anything. We issue no certificates. - How they compare with anyone else. We do not rank members. Readers' Selection reports how student readers scored papers in one term. - That the work is correct, original or their own beyond what the page says. We make no finding that a paper is free of copying or of AI-written text. We do not claim that AI-written text can be detected, and we do not act on a detector's score. A paper's page shows what the author declared. - Who they are. We do not check identity documents. A name on a page is the name the member gave us. - How old they are. We hold no date of birth and no age. - That they are enrolled, or hold a degree. Section 9. - That they may work in the United States. We know nothing about that. - How they behaved here. Pages show nothing about reports, warnings, suspensions or blocks. - Everything they did here. Members choose which items to share. The absence of an item says nothing. - That the people who confirmed something are disinterested. Teammates confirm teammates. Officers confirm officers. The page says who confirmed and that we did not check. - That an outside confirmer is who they say. We check an email address at most. - How many hours anything took. Records state counts and dates. We issue no statement of hours. - What anyone thinks of them. A record is not a reference or a recommendation. - That the page is complete, accurate or current beyond its own date. We do not re-check items at intervals, and we do not promise that a page is free of error. A record is as good as its source, and the page tells you what the source is. 11. How much weight to give it ============================== That is yours to judge, and this page is here to help you do it. - We are new and small. One person runs Tillyard day to day. A record from a new place carries the weight a reader gives it after opening it. - Nothing here stands in for experience with an employer. Members are told so, and told to keep everything from here out of the Experience section. - The sources vary in strength. A count from an attendance log is exact about what it counts. A confirmation from an organization's own email address is stronger than one marked "unverified contact". A confirmation from teammates is the statement of people who know the facts and are not strangers to the candidate. A reading by three students tells you three students read it. - The work is usually there to be read. A paper, a project, a merged contribution or a tutorial can be opened. Ten minutes with the work will tell you more than any page about it. - The candidate can be asked. Someone who did the thing can explain what they did, what went wrong and what they would change. Someone who did not, cannot. - Accuracy is itself information. A candidate who lists a paper as a "student publication" under Publications, quotes the page's own sentence and prints the code has described it exactly as we ask. That tells you something about how they describe things. We make no claim that any item here predicts how a person will perform in any role. 12. If a résumé says more than the page ======================================= 12.1 What members have agreed ----------------------------- Members agree to describe each item as its page describes it, in fewer words if they like and never in bigger ones; to keep everything from here out of any heading about employment, education or certification; never to present an item as a higher kind than it is; and to take a withdrawn item down promptly. How to list this on a résumé gives them wording for every kind of item. 12.2 What a mismatch looks like ------------------------------- What a mismatch looks like. Columns: the résumé says, the page will show. The résumé says | The page will show ------------------------------------ "Research Intern, Tillyard", or the item under Experience | A fixed sentence that the member was not an employee, intern or contractor "Peer-reviewed publication" or "journal article" | "Read by [number] students at other colleges and approved by the editor", in a student publication "Certified in", "completed a course in", a level or a grade | Counts, dates and who confirmed. We issue none of those things "Verified by Tillyard" | The actual source: a log, named students, teammates, an officer, an outside contact "Best paper award", "first place", "prize" | Readers' Selection or a finalist's line, with two numbers and no prize A bigger number than the page | The page's number A title the page does not show | No such title "Verified student" | The college email line, which says a mailbox was checked A Tillyard link offered for something that turns out to be under "Self-reported" on a public page | No record page. The member's own statement Where the résumé and the page differ, the page is what our records show. 12.3 What you can do -------------------- How you handle a discrepancy with a candidate is your decision. Many are careless and not dishonest: a template with only an Experience section, a line written before a count changed. If you believe a title or a record is false, or that someone is using our name to mislead, you can tell us through the form at tillyard.org/dispute, which needs no account and has a category for exactly that, or by writing to legal@tillyard.org. We may ask the member to correct the description, and where it concerns a title or an item we may withdraw it. We do not promise an outcome or a time. We do not tell you what we did about another person, and we do not discuss the member with you. If a record is withdrawn, its page will say so the next time you open it. 13. What you can ask of us ========================== 13.1 What we do for someone checking a record --------------------------------------------- - Publish each record at the member's request, on a page you can open without an account, with its status on the day. - Provide a lookup by code at tillyard.org/verify. - Take reports of a false record, a forged page or misuse of our name, from anyone. - Answer valid legal process. The Law Enforcement and Legal Requests Policy says how. 13.2 What we do not do ---------------------- - We do not confirm, add to or explain an individual record by phone, email or letter. The page is the confirmation. A spoken or emailed confirmation would be an unrecorded statement by us about a person, and the page already shows the current status. - We do not answer employment-verification requests or fill in verification forms. There was no employment. - We do not give references or recommendations. - We do not issue statements of hours, completion letters or transcripts. - We do not offer recruiter accounts, candidate search, or lists of members by college, field, skill or anything else. - We do not pass messages to members. A public page has no contact control, and nobody can write to a member through the site from one. - We do not take postings from individual employers at present. The site's guides link to other organizations' own listings. - We do not sell access to members or their records, to employers or to anyone. A sponsor of the site gets no access either. The Sponsorship and Independence Policy governs sponsorship. - We do not provide signed credential files, digital badges or feeds for applicant systems at present. A link to a record page is the way to refer to one. - We do not notify you when a record you looked at changes (section 8.7). 14. Using record pages, and what is yours to handle =================================================== 14.1 What you may do -------------------- You may open, read, print and keep a record page to check a claim someone made to you. You may store a link to a record page in your own files or your applicant system. You may open a member's public page if they gave you its address. 14.2 What you may not do ------------------------ You may not collect record pages, public pages or directory results in bulk, by hand or by program. You may not build them into another product, a database or a candidate-sourcing tool. You may not use the lookup form to guess codes. The Acceptable Use Policy applies to visitors as well as members. Please do not describe a candidate as certified, accredited, screened, vetted or recommended by us. We do none of those things. Do not use our name in a posting or an advertisement in a way that suggests we have screened or supplied candidates. 14.3 What a record page is, for your purposes --------------------------------------------- A record page is published at the member's request. It reports the facts stated on it, on the basis stated on it, as of the day you open it. It is one piece of information and it is yours to weigh. - It is not a reference, a recommendation or an assessment of anyone's character, ability or fitness. - It is not a background check. We are not a consumer reporting agency, and a record page is not a consumer report. We do not assemble or evaluate information about people for employers, and we take nothing from you or from anyone else for showing you a page. - It is not confirmation of identity, enrolment, a degree, or a right to work. 14.4 What is yours ------------------ How you use what you read in a hiring or admissions decision is governed by laws that apply to you: equal-opportunity law, the law on background checks if you use a screening firm, and whatever else applies where you are. We cannot advise you on them and this page does not try to. A record page shows a name, and can show a college and a graduation year if the member chose to show them. It shows no photograph, no date of birth and no age. 15. Background-screening firms and verification services ======================================================== If you are checking a candidate's history on behalf of an employer: - Do not record Tillyard as an employer, and do not send us an employment-verification or education-verification request. The candidate was not employed by us and we are not a school. We do not reply to such requests with information about a person. - Use the record page. If the candidate's résumé carries a link or a code, the page behind it is the whole of what we say, and you may print it for the file with the date. - Report the kind of item accurately. If your report to a client mentions a record, describe it as what it is: a record page published by a member of a website, stating what the member did and who confirmed it. It is not a verification of employment, education, a licence or a certification. - Do not collect pages in bulk or add them to a database (section 14.2). - We are not a source of adverse information. Pages show nothing about conduct, and a page that reads "no longer listed" carries no meaning (section 8.2). We do not take part in any verification network, and no fee is payable to us for anything. 16. Admissions readers, scholarship committees, faculty and career offices ========================================================================== 16.1 Reading a paper from Tillyard Research ------------------------------------------ Tillyard Research is a student publication. Papers are written by members, offered to students at other colleges who chose to read, and decided by the editor. It is not a scholarly journal, and a paper in it has not been refereed by specialists. It costs nothing to submit a paper or to have one published. We sell no mentoring, editing or placement, and nobody can pay to be published. Every submission asks whether the work was made for a class, a lab or an employer, and the paper's page says what the author answered. Publishing is the student's own choice. We never ask an instructor to send work, and we do not name a professor, an office or a college as a partner. 16.2 What a student may tell you -------------------------------- Students are told to list a paper under publications or writing with the words "student publication", never as a peer-reviewed or journal article, and never as research carried out under supervision here. If an application describes it otherwise, the record page shows what is true. 16.3 Credit and forms --------------------- We do not award credit and do not sign credit forms, practicum agreements, learning plans, hour logs or evaluations. If a college gives a student credit for something done here, that is the college's decision under its own rules. 16.4 Faculty, advisers and career offices ----------------------------------------- You may mention us to students as a fact: that the site exists and what it is. Please do not say that your college, your department or your office approves or recommends us unless it has decided to and has told us so in writing. The Trademark and Brand Use Policy says more. 17. Your privacy when you check =============================== - We do not record who opened a page. Opening a record page adds one to that page's total for the day. We keep daily totals only, and nothing about who opened it: no name, no browser details, no referring page. - The member can see the totals. A member can see how many times each of their items was opened each day, and how many of those came from someone typing the code. They cannot see who. If you are the only person who has a link, the member may reasonably guess that an open on a given day was you. - Reading a public page sets no cookie, and a link or code typed into the lookup box is not stored. - Your network address is processed to deliver the page and to limit abuse. Our network provider handles it on every request. Our own database keeps only a scrambled form of it in the counters that enforce limits, for a short time. - The lookup form uses a bot check supplied by an outside provider, which receives technical signals from your browser. - If you write to us or use the dispute form, we keep what you send in order to handle it. The Privacy Notice governs and gives the periods. 18. If you or your organization are named on a page =================================================== You may be named on a member's record page because you confirmed something for them from outside the site, or because the member did service for your organization or held a role in it. - If you confirmed something and want to take it back, use the link in the receipt we sent when you confirmed, or the form at tillyard.org/dispute and choose "I did not give this confirmation". Proving the same email address withdraws the confirmation at once. - If you were named without agreeing to it, or the page is wrong about you, use the dispute form. Where you write from an address at the organization named and prove it by code, your name is hidden while we look. - If you speak for an organization and object to how it is named, write to legal@tillyard.org or use the dispute form. Being named on a page does not make you or your organization affiliated with us, and the page says what you did in exact words. Section 18 of The Record and Verification Policy and the Privacy Notice say more. 19. If something looks wrong ============================ If something looks wrong. Columns: what you see, what to do. What you see | What to do ------------------------- A page that looks like ours at an address that does not begin tillyard.org/r/ | It is not ours. Tell us at security@tillyard.org A screenshot, PDF or printed document that does not match the live page | The live page is the record. If you think the copy was altered, tell us through the dispute form A code that returns "Nothing is listed here" | Check each character against the résumé. Codes never use 0, 1, I, L, O or U. If it still does not match, the item may never have been on The Record A record you believe is false | The dispute form, under "a title or record I believe is false". Every record page also has a link for reporting a problem with that page A record that names you or your organization wrongly | Section 18 Someone presenting themselves as our staff, a recruiter for us, or our "campus representative" | We have one member of staff at present and no representatives. Tell us at legal@tillyard.org Reports are read by a person, and that person is not always at a desk. We do not promise an outcome or a time, and raising a concern never counts against the person who raised it. 20. Questions we are asked ========================== Was this person your intern or your employee? Members are not employees. Only a member of the separate, unpaid Tillyard Internship program is an intern, for one term, and their Record says so. Members choose what they do, and nobody here assigns, supervises or pays for it. Can you confirm their dates, or give a reference? There are no dates of employment, and we give no references. The record page shows the dates of the activity and whether the record stands. Is Tillyard Research a peer-reviewed journal? No. It is a student publication. Its readers are students at other colleges, and the editor decides. Who is the editor? The president, who runs Tillyard day to day. The site's About page says who that is. Record pages name the role and not the person. Are the student readers qualified? They are students who chose to read. They score against a published rubric. They are not specialists, and the page does not say they are. Do you check papers for plagiarism or AI-written text? We make no finding that a paper is free of either. Authors say how they used AI tools, and the paper's page shows it. The editor's decision is editorial judgment. The link says "no longer listed". Is that a bad sign? No. It usually means the member has the item set to private. Ask them for a current link. The page says "withdrawn". What happened? The record no longer stands. We do not publish who withdrew it or why, and we do not tell you if you ask. Ask the candidate. The code does not work. Check the characters. If the form says one character looks wrong, it is a typing error. If it says we have no item with that code, compare it with the résumé once more, then ask the candidate. I cannot find the candidate in your directory. The directory lists only members who chose to be listed, and at present only signed-in members can search it. Not finding someone means nothing. Can I get a list of your members at a particular college, or with a particular skill? No. We keep no such list for anyone outside, and we do not sell or share access to members. Can we post a role with you, or pay to reach your members? No. We take no postings from individual employers at present and sell no access. Sponsorship of the site is a separate matter, arranged in writing, and it buys no access to members and no say over anything. Does it cost anything to check a record? No. Can I keep a copy in the candidate's file? Yes. Print the page and note the date. Can I contact the person named as confirming something? A person named on a page agreed to confirm one fact. They did not agree to act as a reference. If you want to speak to them, ask the candidate to arrange it. Is the candidate still a student? We do not know. Ask the college. Will you tell me if this record changes? We cannot. We do not know who you are. Open the link again. Why do your pages spend so many words on what they are not? Because overstated checking is common, and a record that says exactly who looked at what is one a careful reader can use. Changes to this document ======================== We may revise this page. When we do, we change the version number and the effective date at the top. If the site changes so that a statement here stops being true, we aim to change the statement before the change takes effect. The wording on a record page, and the policies named in section 1.3, are what count. Contact ======= - To check an item from a résumé: tillyard.org/verify - To report a false record, or to dispute or correct something, with or without an account: tillyard.org/dispute - A fake record page, a forged code or misuse of the editor's mark: security@tillyard.org - Legal notices, court orders, and requests from an organization named on a page: legal@tillyard.org, or by post to Tillyard, 10602 York Rd SW, Etna, Ohio 43062 - General questions about how to read a record (we do not discuss individual members): support@tillyard.org - Accessibility of record pages: accessibility@tillyard.org