Method
How we verify
Every file passes the same seven steps, in the same order, and the record of those steps is stored on the file itself. This page is the standard the site is built to enforce — not a description of good intentions.
The two judgments
Every file carries two separate verdicts, and they are never collapsed into one:
- The image verdict — is the photograph what it is presented as?
- The claim verdict — is the story attached to it true?
The most valuable files in the format live where those two diverge: the photograph is authentic, and the caption travelling with it is not. An account that can only ask “is this real?” cannot express that. We can, and it is the difference between correcting people and showing them something better.
The seven steps
- State the claim in its strongest circulating form. We find how it is actually told and quote a real instance. Refuting a weakened version nobody makes is not verification; it is theatre.
- Trace the claim to its origin. Where a story started is usually both the best material in the file and the fastest route to a verdict.
- Verify the image independently of the claim. Reverse-image search, locate the earliest known instance, identify the photographer or archive, and find the original caption. The original caption is frequently the whole story.
- Establish the rights position. This happens here, at step four, not at publication. Rights block more files than evidence does, and discovering an image is unusable after the file is written wastes the file.
- Search for disconfirming evidence. We look explicitly for the case against our own working answer, and record what was searched — including searches that found nothing. A documented null result is evidence; an undocumented one is a guess.
- Check for a later resolution. Popular versions of mysteries freeze at the moment they went viral. Many “unsolved” cases were quietly solved years later and the internet never updated. We record the date of the most recent authoritative source.
- Assign both verdicts, with the specific evidence for each. A verdict that cannot be tied to a citable source cannot be assigned.
Two rules that sit on top
Cooling off. No file publishes on the day its verdict was first assigned. A second pass with fresh eyes catches the confident-and-wrong cases, which are the only ones that do real damage.
Two keys. A file gets an independent second review before publication if it names a living identifiable person, concerns a recent event, touches health, elections, or law, or accuses any named party of fabrication.
The seven verdicts
Every file ends with exactly one of these. There are no custom verdicts, and none of them means “we ran out of time” — a file we could not finish is parked, not published, and it is never laundered into “Unresolved”.
The claim is supported by primary or authoritative evidence, and nothing of comparable quality contradicts it.
What it takes to assign it
- At least one Tier 1 source that addresses the specific claim directly, not its general subject area.
- Two independent sources where the claim is surprising, contested, or consequential.
- A documented search for contradicting evidence — the search itself is recorded, including null results.
When it is the right answer
- The extraordinary thing in the hook demonstrably happened, and the record shows it.
- A widely doubted event that the archives straightforwardly confirm.
When reaching for it is an error
- The claim is broadly true but false in the specific detail the file highlights. Verify the hook, not the vicinity of the hook.
- Corroboration comes from several outlets all rewriting one wire story. That is one source, not several.
- The supporting source was found but not read in full.
Required caveats
- Where a figure, date, or death toll is contested in the record, the file states the range rather than picking the most dramatic number.
The core of the claim holds up, but a specific detail as it circulates is wrong or overstated.
What it takes to assign it
- The core assertion meets the full Verified threshold.
- The inaccurate detail is positively identified and sourced — the file names exactly what is wrong.
- The distortion is shown to be genuinely circulating, not invented so the file has something to correct.
When it is the right answer
- A real event whose popular retelling has acquired an embellishment.
- A true story where a number, a date, or an attribution drifted over time.
When reaching for it is an error
- Hedging because the research was not finished. That is insufficient-evidence, an internal outcome.
- The wrong detail *is* the claim. If the interesting part is the false part, this is Misleading or False.
Required caveats
- The file must state plainly which part is true and which part is not. "Mostly" without a specified remainder is not a verdict.
The claim is consistent with the evidence and taken seriously by qualified people, but it is not established.
What it takes to assign it
- At least one Tier 1-2 source treating the claim as a live, credible possibility.
- A named mechanism or body of evidence that would make it true — not merely the absence of a refutation.
- An explicit statement of what is still missing before it could be Verified.
When it is the right answer
- A leading scientific or historical hypothesis that has support but not consensus.
- An identification supported by strong evidence but awaiting official confirmation.
When reaching for it is an error
- As a courtesy to a claim with no affirmative evidence at all. Absence of refutation is not plausibility — that is Unsupported.
- To avoid delivering an unwelcome verdict the evidence actually supports.
Required caveats
- The file must name the specific evidence that would settle it, and say who would have to produce it.
- Plausible is never rounded up to "probably true" in any caption, script, or social variant.
The events are real and documented, but the explanation is genuinely open — qualified people have looked, and nothing yet accounts for all of it.
What it takes to assign it
- The underlying event independently meets the Verified threshold. It demonstrably happened.
- Serious investigation actually occurred: an official inquiry, academic work, or credible sustained journalism.
- No proposed explanation has achieved consensus among people qualified to judge.
- A recorded check that it has not since been solved. Many "unsolved mysteries" were quietly resolved and the internet never updated.
When it is the right answer
- A documented event with competing serious explanations, none of which fits all the evidence.
When reaching for it is an error
- A file whose research was not finished. That is insufficient-evidence, and the file is blocked rather than published.
- A mystery with a strong leading explanation that simply lacks formal confirmation — that is Plausible.
- Any use that lets the audience infer "therefore anything is possible".
Required caveats
- The serious candidate explanations must be listed, each with what it explains and what it fails to explain.
- The date of the most recent authoritative source must be stated, so the reader knows how current "unresolved" is.
No credible evidence supports the claim. That is not the same as proving it false.
What it takes to assign it
- A documented search of the places the evidence would appear if it existed, with the searches recorded.
- Confirmation that every source repeating the claim traces back to the same unsourced origin, or to none.
- An explicit statement of why this is Unsupported rather than False.
When it is the right answer
- A claim that circulates entirely on repetition, with no traceable primary record behind it.
- An attributed quotation that appears in no contemporaneous source.
When reaching for it is an error
- When positive disconfirming evidence exists. Use False and show it.
- When the search was cursory. "I could not find it" is a note, not a verdict.
Required caveats
- The file must state that absence of evidence is not disproof, and say what evidence would change the verdict.
The individual facts may check out, but the way they are framed leads to a false conclusion.
What it takes to assign it
- The true context is established at Verified standard — the file can show what the material actually is.
- The misleading framing is documented as it actually circulates, quoted from a real instance.
- The gap between the two is stated explicitly rather than implied.
When it is the right answer
- An authentic photograph attached to the wrong event, place, date, or person.
- A real statistic stripped of the context that gives it meaning.
- A genuine quotation cut so that it reverses the speaker’s meaning.
When reaching for it is an error
- When the underlying facts are themselves fabricated. That is False.
- When the framing is a good-faith simplification that misleads nobody in practice.
Required caveats
- When the image is authentic, the file must say so plainly and credit the photographer. The caption is the thing that failed, not their work.
The claim is demonstrably untrue, and the evidence against it is clear.
What it takes to assign it
- Positive disconfirming evidence at Verified standard, or
- a documented origin as fabrication, hoax, or satire, or
- the claim asserts something reliable records would necessarily contain, a competent search of those records shows it absent, and that search is documented.
When it is the right answer
- A hoax whose construction is documented, ideally with a confession or a traced origin.
- A claim that a definitive record positively contradicts.
When reaching for it is an error
- Absence of evidence alone, without establishing that the evidence should exist. That is Unsupported.
- Any framing that targets the audience or the person who shared it rather than the claim.
Required caveats
- Where the origin of the fabrication is known, the file names it. The origin is almost always the better story.
- The tone rule is binding: the target is the claim. Never the reader, never whoever passed it on.
What may support a conclusion
Sources are ranked, and the rank decides what they are allowed to do.
- Tier 1 — primary and authoritative. The record itself, or the body responsible for it: official reports and inquiries, government and institutional archives, peer-reviewed research, contemporaneous documents, and original photographs with documented provenance. A single Tier 1 source can support a Verified verdict where it addresses the claim directly.
- Tier 2 — authoritative secondary. Expert work built on primary sources with visible methodology: scholarly books, curatorial publications, investigative journalism that cites its own sources, and fact-checking organisations that show their evidence chain. Two independent Tier 2 sources can support a Verified verdict where no Tier 1 exists.
- Tier 3 — supporting and contextual. Useful for leads and framing, never sufficient alone. Wikipedia lives here, and strictly as a finding aid: we follow and read its citations, and we cite what it cites — never the article itself.
- Tier 4 — signal only. Social posts, forums, aggregators, and AI-generated summaries, including our own. These tell us a claim exists and how it circulates. They are never evidence that it is true.
Rules that override the ranking
- Directness beats tier. A Tier 2 source addressing our exact claim beats a Tier 1 source that only addresses the general area.
- Independence is checked, not assumed. Two outlets rewriting the same wire story are one source. Citation circularity — one error repeated until it looks corroborated — is the most common failure mode in this subject area.
- Contrary evidence outranks confirming evidence of equal tier. A credible source contradicting our working answer forces re-examination, not averaging.
- Language and access are not exemptions. If the decisive record is paywalled or non-English, the file waits until it is obtained. It is not verified “as best we could”.
Images: the gate with no override
Unknown rights mean the file does not ship. “It was on Google Images”, “it’s all over the internet”, and “it’s old so it must be public domain” are not clearances. Before publication every image records its rights holder, the specific licence, the page that states that licence, the attribution text, and who verified it on what date.
Two traps we check every time:
- Age is not public domain. An 1890 photograph may be out of copyright, but a specific modern scan or restoration of it can carry its own claimed rights. We record which reproduction we are using and where it came from.
- NonCommercial and NoDerivatives licences are unusable to us. NC is incompatible with a monetised publication; ND forbids the crops and overlays every social format requires. Both are caught at research time, not at publication.
No AI-generated image is ever presented as a file’s evidence. If a generated illustration is used to show something that could not be photographed, it is labelled as an illustration on the page itself, and it supports nothing.
What we don’t cover
Some subjects are excluded because this format — short, confident, resolved — is structurally wrong for them, and being wrong there causes real harm.
- Medical or health claims that could influence someone’s treatment decisions.
- Claims about living private individuals.
- Active elections, current political disputes, and live legal proceedings.
- Ongoing missing-persons cases, and deaths recent enough that family are likely living. Historic cases are handled with explicit care and never with victim imagery.
- Conspiracy narratives targeting an ethnic, religious, or national group. These are not claims to adjudicate; engaging them on their own terms launders them.
When we get it wrong
We correct in place, dated, stating what we said and what is actually true. We do not quietly delete files. The corrections ledger is public and permanent, and it is the most persuasive evidence available that the verdicts on this site are real.