Sources & methodology

Nothing enters this database without a source. This page explains how facts are verified, how numbers are labeled, and how sources are preserved.

Source policy

• Every factual claim on a project page is backed by at least one listed source.
• Sources are ranked: official company statements and financial filings first, established press second, blogs and forums only for color or when nothing better exists.
• Each source is archived (Wayback Machine or archive.today) at the time it is added, and the archived copy is linked. Live links rot; archives do not.

Confidence levels for numbers

User counts are where most tech folklore is born. Every metric here carries one of three labels:

• Confirmed — official company figure or audited financial report.
• Reported — published by media, citing a source.
• Estimated — analyst estimate, or our own, clearly marked.

We also never mix metric types. 100 million registered accounts is not 100 million users. If a media story conflates them, we record what the underlying source actually measured.

Dates and precision

When only a year is known, we say so — a date shown as “1996” means the day and month are unknown, not January 1st. Shutdown dates prefer the date the service actually stopped working, not the announcement date (we record both when known).

Screenshots

Screenshots are used as historical illustration under fair use, always with attribution and a link to the original capture (usually the Wayback Machine). We do not mass-reproduce archived content.

Verification

Each page shows a last verified date. Records older than 12 months get re-checked. If you find an error, write to [email protected] with a source and it will be fixed.