Why does validation documentation fail?

The most common reason validation documentation fails: Documenting only your successes. If your validation log contains nothing but confirmations, you are not documenting — you are curating a highlight reel. The most valuable entries are the ones where reality surprised you, because those are the entries that will actually change how you think. A validation history with no disconfirmations is a warning sign, not a badge of rigor.

The fix: Pick a schema you tested recently — a belief you put against reality in any form (a prediction, a conversation, an experiment). Write a validation record with five fields: (1) the schema as you held it before testing, (2) what you did to test it, (3) what you expected to happen, (4) what actually happened, (5) what this means for the schema going forward. Be specific. 'It mostly worked' is not a result. Name the evidence.

The underlying principle is straightforward: Recording what you tested and what happened creates a validation history.