Methodology

Evidence levels

Every statement is assigned one of five evidence levels at submission:

• S — Primary source. Video recording, verbatim transcript, or official published document authored by the person. No intermediary. Highest confidence.
• A — Secondary source. Reputable news article or official report that directly quotes the person with a named journalist and dated publication.
• B — Tertiary / corroborated. Multiple independent sources reporting the same statement without a primary source available. Requires at least two independent outlets.
• C — Aggregated / paraphrase. Summary or paraphrase without direct quotation marks. Labeled clearly as non-verbatim.
• D — Needs verification. Single secondhand report or unverified attribution. Flagged pending additional sourcing.

B-level statements require manual promotion by the project owner and cannot be auto-elevated. D-level statements are never published to public-facing pages.

Review process

All statements go through a four-stage review:

1. Source verification. The original source URL is checked and an archive snapshot is requested.
2. Quote boundary check. We verify the original text starts and ends at the right place — no mid-sentence truncation that changes meaning.
3. Context provision. The sentence before and after the statement is recorded to prevent decontextualization.
4. Arthur approval. All statements require final human approval from the project owner before moving to published status. No automated approval path exists.

The role of AI

AI is used only for summarization assistance — generating a draft one-sentence summary of what was said. The AI summary is:

• Always labeled as AI-generated.
• Always displayed separately from the original text.
• Always subject to human review before publication.
• Never used as a substitute for the original source quote.

AI does not determine evidence levels, approve statements, or generate imagery.

What we do not include

• Statements attributed by inference or interpretation.
• Paraphrases presented as direct quotes.
• Statements from private individuals (not public figures).
• Statements from public figures acting in private capacity (medical, family, etc.) unless explicitly public.
• Satirical or fictional statements.
• Anonymous sourcing without corroboration.

Corrections

If you believe a statement record is wrong, see the Corrections page. Our target is to review correction requests within 72 hours of receipt.