Earth Diary
Humanity's living memory
Methodology & Sources

How the record is written.

Earth Diary is a hand-edited daily narrative built on top of open public data. This page explains where the numbers come from, how we score significance, and what we do when the world's sources disagree.

Source hierarchy

Primary data, then everything else.

Tier 1 — Primary / Official

Direct measurements from instruments; official statistics from governments and inter-governmental agencies.

Tier 2 — Verified reporting

Established wire services and datasets. A verified claim needs one tier-1 source or two independent tier-2 sources.

Tier 3 — Discovery / Preprint / Community

Global event corpora, preprints, and reader contributions. Used as leads; never as sole evidence.

No sources registered in this tier yet.

Sources are loaded live from the Earth Diary source directory (24 publishers on file).

Confidence labels

Every claim is labeled.

Verified

Confirmed by at least one tier-1 source, or two independent tier-2 sources.

Disputed

Reputable sources disagree. Both views are cited on the event card.

Estimated

Modelled or interpolated (e.g. population nowcast). Method disclosed.

Interpreted

Editorial reading of data — clearly flagged, never presented as fact.

Significance score

What makes something 'important'?

Each event carries a 0–100 significance score combining reach (how many people are directly affected), precedent (has this happened before this century?), verifiability (are the sources primary?), and durability (will it still matter in five years?). Scores are editorial, disclosed on every card, and recomputed as new data arrives.
Disputes & corrections

When we're wrong, we say so.

  • Every daily record has a permanent URL. Corrections are appended with a timestamp — never silently overwritten.
  • If a claim is disputed within 72 hours of publication and a tier-1 source contradicts us, we relabel it and add a note.
  • Readers can propose corrections and contributions through the Contribute page.
  • Modelled estimates always link to the model card and the last verified data point.
Editorial safeguards

Against doomscrolling and drift.

A day on Earth is more than the day's crises. Every daily record must include progress, discovery, generosity, nature, and ordinary life alongside the headlines. If a day's draft skews to a single register, the desk sends it back. This isn't optimism — it's completeness.
This build

What's live, what's still coming.

The editorial archive, source directory, and contribution queue are live in the Earth Diary database. Every item is labelled — Seeded example items are demonstration content used to prove out the format; they are not verified live reporting. Automated public-API ingestion (NASA, NOAA, USGS, WHO, World Bank, GDELT, UN, national agencies) is in development and will begin adding Live source items after adapter QA.