Editorial Policy

Verification · Evidence · Corrections · What Would Change This

Public status model

Every claim is labeled OFFICIAL / VERIFIED / REPORTED / UNCONFIRMED / DEBUNKED, with orthogonal modifiers DEVELOPMENT-ERA, CONTESTED, PRELIMINARY where applicable. Status is shown with icon + text — never color alone. Numerical confidence is internal/tertiary only.

Verification rule

• No claim is public without a source or evidence object and editorial adjudication.
• Claim pages show: claim · status · what we know · what we don’t · what would change this · sources · last reviewed · revision history.
• Verification is visible via the CTA “See evidence & history”, not a numeric trust score.
• Map markers carry evidence states: OFFICIAL / VERIFIED IN SHIPPING BUILD / COMMUNITY VERIFIED / PRE-RELEASE / DISPUTED.

Corrections

Corrections are preserved, not erased. A status change creates a ClaimRevision row (previous status → new status, reason, date, evidence) and a public entry in the corrections ledger. History is append-only and auditable. See Legal / DMCA for correction requests.

What would change this

Every REPORTED-or-above claim states what would change it (e.g., “Rockstar official confirmation or reproducible shipping-build test would change this status”). This keeps the desk falsifiable.

Spoilers

Story-gated content (missions, character arcs, story-locked locations) carries spoiler metadata and is masked by default. No spoiler-sensitive slug spoils its subject.

Evidence standards

Sources are typed (official, platform-holder, primary record, reputable reporting, community mapping, etc.) and banded (high/medium/low/very-low). Evidence is classed (official/observed/strongly corroborated/credible rumor/community inference/speculative/disproven) and era-tagged (development/shipping/unknown). Measured results require protocol + platform + game version + date + reproducibility state before publication.