How are sources weighed?
By tier and by independence. Every source has a tier, from official down to anonymous, and a weight that goes with it. What counts toward a state is how many independent origins carry a report, not how many posts. A pickup rate measures independent coverage, not correctness.
Updated .
Tiers and weights
| Tier | Weight | Who |
|---|---|---|
| Official | 0.9 | Governments, militaries, ministries and UN bodies: the authority on their own actions, a party to the conflict on others'. |
| Wire | 0.9 | Reuters, AP, AFP and outlets with editorial verification. |
| Established | 0.7 | National and regional outlets with editorial standards and a known lean. |
| OSINT | 0.6 | Named open-source aggregators and analysts, known by name. |
| Partisan | 0.4 | Media tied to a party, a militia or a state's information arm. |
| Anonymous | 0.2 | Unverified accounts, unnamed channels and crowd reports. |
An origin starts from the weight of its heaviest tier.
Independence
- Origins, not posts
Reposts, forwards and outlets relaying one wire story or one party's statement count as one origin. One outlet cannot corroborate itself under several names.
- Relays
A relay channel reposts what other outlets reported. When it names a rated outlet, the claim is credited to that outlet and weighs as it, but never above OSINT, since a repost can garble what it carries.
- Leads
When a relay names no outlet, its post is its own origin. An event resting only on such posts is a lead: off the map unless Show leads is on, until a report with an origin of its own joins it.
Pickup rate
Pickup rate measures how often other independent outlets report the same events, not whether a source is correct. It is decided 72 hours after a report and shown from 10 decided reports.
Questions
Does a high pickup rate mean a source is accurate?
No. A true report nobody else covered counts as not picked up, and a false one that independent outlets repeated counts as picked up.
Who sets a source's tier?
The editor, or the hand-written starting list. The pickup rate can open a review but never changes a tier. Publishers found through news search that no person has rated are rated automatically by AI and labelled so on the sources page.
Verification states explainedHow to read the conflict mapSiren alert or confirmed strike?Methodology
Unofficial, built from public posts; verify before acting.