Sources and quotes
How a figure's evidence is ranked, how a reference work is followed to the pages it cites, and the quote every figure must carry.
The source hierarchy
A count of sources says nothing about their quality: four retailer pages repeating one maker figure are one source. Every cited page is classed by what kind of page it is, and a figure is taken from the strongest kind that states it.
| Rank | Kind | What it is | Sites | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Manufacturerglock.com, sigsauer.com, heckler-koch.com | The maker's own product page, manual, datasheet or catalogue. The strongest source for a figure the maker publishes. | - | - |
| 1 | Standards bodysaami.org, cip-bobp.org | SAAMI, C.I.P. or a NATO standard: the authority on cartridge dimensions and pressures. | - | - |
| 2 | Government or militaryarmy.mil, gov.uk, dtic.mil | A procurement document, a technical manual, a military or government site, a national museum. | - | - |
| 3 | Peer-reviewed articleeuropepmc.org, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, academic.oup.com, bmj.com | A journal article that passed peer review, read from the journal or an open archive of it (Europe PMC, PubMed Central): reviewed and citable by its DOI, but reviewed for its study's method, not for a firearm's specification. | - | - |
| 4 | Reference workmodernfirearms.net, forgottenweapons.com, en.wikipedia.org, nramuseum.org | An independent reference: Modern Firearms, Forgotten Weapons, Military Factory, Small Arms Review, an encyclopaedia, a museum collection, Jane's. | - | - |
| 5 | Specification aggregatorhandgunhero.com, genitron.com, bluebookofgunvalues.com | A site that compiles specifications from other sources without stating which. Useful for coverage, weak as evidence. | - | - |
| 6 | Pressgunsandammo.com, americanrifleman.org, thefirearmblog.com | A magazine, review site or blog: a journalist's measurement or a maker's figure repeated. | - | - |
| 7 | Retailer or auctionguns.com, palmettostatearmory.com, rockislandauction.com | A listing written to sell the item. Confirms existence and market names; figures are copied from elsewhere. | - | - |
| 8 | Communityimfdb.org, guns.fandom.com | A forum, wiki or fan site. Existence and naming only; never the sole source for a figure. | - | - |
| 9 | Unclassified | A page whose site is not in the map. Treated as the weakest evidence until classified. | - | - |
Following a reference work
A reference work such as Wikipedia states most figures but is a pointer, not the source. Research reads its reference list and cites the page the figure came from.
- Read the article's reference list and take each reference's page, and its archived copy where it has one.
- Drop what is not evidence: a lapsed domain now serving a casino or a loan shop, and other wikis.
- Rank the rest by the source hierarchy: a standards body first for a cartridge, the gun's own maker first for a firearm, another maker's page last, a PDF a little ahead of a page of the same kind.
- Read the best few from the best two articles. A dead page is read from its archived copy, and a PDF (a data sheet, a manual) is read as text.
- Cite the figure from the page that states it, and record the article as the pointer that led there.
The quote rule
Every figure a check, an agent or a person writes carries the source's own words, at least twelve characters, and the page they came from.
The page is fetched again and the quote must be found on it, compared without regard to case, spacing or a colon. A quote that is not there does not count, however right the figure.
A figure no page states is left out, never estimated. The materials registry has no density for carbon fibre or hard rubber for that reason.
The materials check reads every registry page again each run, so a page that changes or disappears is reported.
Checks that use this method
Findings this method raised
Every task the 10 checks resting on this method put on the review queue, open and closed, with where each one stands.
Reading the findings…