Integrity checks
Whether what a record says could have come from a source, or was filled in by a generator that did not know. Invented figures, filler prose and feature lists copied between unrelated guns leave exact fingerprints; this page counts them, and what it found has been removed rather than kept looking plausible.
What it asks
Cloned figures: the same weight, barrel length and overall length on guns from ten or more different makers. No licence or shared design spans that many companies, so those figures were stamped on. They are removed, leaving an honest gap that the data agent researches from a source. Figures shared by two to nine makers are more often a licensed copy (the FAL made by FN, Mexico and Imbel) and are reviewed by a person instead.
Filler prose: a sentence repeated word for word across dozens of makers once the record's own name and maker are taken out, such as a line about a manufacturer's commitment to a well-engineered product. A description built from those fits every gun and describes none, so it is removed.
Cloned feature lists: one identical list of features stamped on hundreds of guns from dozens of makers.
Sources that are not evidence: a search results page, a machine-written encyclopedia or a mirror of Wikipedia. A mirror is replaced by the page it copies; the others are removed, never a record's last source.
Timelines and size: a firearm introduced before its maker existed, and a weight that does not fit the gun's size. Weight divided by the gun's length, height and width gives an apparent density that sits in a narrow band per category; a figure far outside it, or denser than solid aluminium, is questioned. It cannot see cut-outs or materials, so these are for a person.
Confidence against evidence: no record may claim more confidence than what is left supports, so every record that lost invented figures had its confidence lowered with them.
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What happens to a finding
- Every run is published here as it happened, failures included, before anyone has looked at it.
- Each run is also kept as a report that lists what was fixed since the run before, what is new and what is still open, so progress is measured finding by finding rather than claimed.
- No check edits the catalogue. A finding goes to a person, who corrects the record by hand and cites what the correction rests on; the next run confirms it.
- A check id is never renamed, so a link to one keeps meaning the same question.