Sources & Verification Method

Source matchedReviewed 26 August 2026. The archive inventory was reconciled on August 25, 2026; individual video contents remain separately reviewable.

The HIMR Wiki uses transcripts to find evidence, not as evidence by default. A published claim must say no more than its cited source can establish.

A primary video is not automatic proof

A raw video can establish what a person said or what the recording visibly shows. If Daniel describes an off-camera event, the safe formulation is “Daniel said…” unless an independent source corroborates the event.

Current archive audit

On August 25, 2026, the project preserved the live transcript index and metadata for Internet Archive item 69999 and item 699992. The automated reconciliation found:

Finding	Count
Transcript records	2,227
Records with an Internet Archive video URL	2,043
Records without a video URL	184
Distinct linked video URLs	1,919
Shared video-URL groups	67
Records participating in those shared groups	191
Records over 250 displayed words per minute	55
Records with a malformed displayed duration	4

These are record counts, not a verified count of distinct channel videos. A shared URL may be a duplicate, a chunk of a longer stream, or a mapping error. An implausible speech rate usually indicates suspect duration or timestamp metadata and triggers manual review.

The dated source responses, hashes, normalized manifest, and audit are retained in the maintainers’ private evidence store. Future snapshots do not silently replace earlier ones.

Evidence ladder

Material	How the wiki uses it
Raw video or audio	Verify exact speech and visible action at a stated time
Human-corrected segment	Quote or closely paraphrase only the checked passage
Machine transcript	Locate a likely passage; never treat it as evidence, fact, or a quotation
Title or filename	Describe the archive label, not the truth of the title or date
First-party statement	Attribute the statement to its author
Independent reliable record	Corroborate only the facts within that record’s scope
Reviewed public community image or repost	Establish only what the complete preserved copy appears to show or say, with provenance limits
Other community post or wiki	Establish community usage, record an attributed allegation, or generate a research lead
AI or NotebookLM output	Discover topics; never cite as evidence

Automatic captions and locally generated speech recognition are machine transcripts, even when they were produced from the original media file. They can supply a candidate timestamp. A spoken quotation or close paraphrase becomes video checked only when a human reviewer directly listens to the raw segment; reviewing frames does not count as listening to the soundtrack.

Narrow public research-lead exception

Benign machine-only material may appear publicly only as a conspicuously labelled unverified research lead. The entry must provide the exact source, candidate locator, whether raw media is mapped, available, or missing, and the named human-review queue. It is never evidence, a fact, a quotation, or verified speech. Machine-only serious wrongdoing, sexualized claims involving minors, and invasive private, relationship, financial, travel, or medical detail remain outside the public article until the relevant verification and sensitivity safeguards are met.

Separate attributed self-account exception

A rare, narrower rule permits a minimized, high-level machine-text paraphrase of a notable adult relationship or sexual account attributed to the public creator. It requires a public raw source, exact ranges, material agreement between two independent ASR passes, an explicit statement that nobody directly heard the audio, a bounded response search, and a conspicuous adjacent warning. It never verifies the speech or underlying event. The exception excludes unnamed-person identification, minors or age-dependent claims, alleged crimes or abuse, leaked or graphic material, and any claim whose gist depends on unresolved consent.

Verification states

• Unverified — imported or proposed; research only, except for the narrowly labelled benign research-navigation exception above.
• Source matched — the source identity exists and has been reconciled; its contents are still unchecked.
• Video checked — the cited raw-media segment and surrounding context were manually reviewed.
• Community media checked — the complete available repost and post context were reviewed; no obvious substantive edit or credible authenticity dispute was found, but the original is not authenticated.
• Corroborated — an appropriate independent source also supports the claim.
• Disputed — credible sources conflict and the wiki preserves the disagreement.

From search result to published sentence

1. Draft one atomic claim. Avoid combining several facts under one citation.
2. Locate candidate evidence. Search the transcript archive and source manifest.
3. Open the underlying source. Review the raw segment with surrounding context.
4. If only a repost survives, review the whole copy. Preserve its direct media URL, type, bytes, hash, post context, edit assessment, and any authenticity dispute.
5. Record the evidence scope. Mark self-report, visible action, metadata, independent record, corroboration, or contradiction.
6. Resolve the date basis. Keep event, recording, publication, archive, and review dates separate.
7. Check sensitivity and conflicts. Minimize private information and preserve materially different accounts.
8. Quarantine unsafe machine-only material. Do not publish machine-only serious wrongdoing, sexualized-minor claims, or invasive private or medical detail. A benign public lead must name its raw-media status and review queue.
9. Publish with a precise citation. Record the source ID, locator, check status, reviewer, and review date.

Evidence recordsource matched; full media verification not claimed

Example raw-video citation

Source ID

example-only

Locator

00:12:00–00:12:26

Scope

Example of a self-report; not an assertion that the reported event happened

Reviewed

25 August 2026

This component deliberately shows whether a reader is looking at a checked segment or merely a matched source.

Dates, contradictions, and transcript corrections

A date taken only from an archive filename is labeled filename date. If the exact event or publication date cannot be established, the wiki uses a range, circa, or unknown rather than false precision.

Video titles are not treated as conclusions. If a later source changes an earlier account, both are dated and attributed. The wiki does not silently choose the more dramatic version.

Quoted words are checked against the media. Unclear audio is marked [unclear], conservatively paraphrased, or omitted. Machine-transcript corrections do not alter the preserved raw snapshot.

Privacy and sensitive material

The wiki does not republish home addresses, private contact details, financial account data, leaked intimate material, or non-public legal names merely because another site contains them. An allegation may be recorded with an adjacent warning when its exact source is attributed, its truth is labeled unverified, disputed, or corroborated, its corroboration status is stated, and a relevant response is included or the page says none was located. A corroborated allegation must still be labeled as an allegation and identify the independent support. A warning does not turn the allegation into fact or excuse doxxing, intimate material, diagnoses, threats, or harassment-oriented detail. Outside the separate attributed-self-account exception described above, machine output alone is never enough to publish a serious allegation, a sexualized claim involving a minor, or invasive private, relationship, financial, travel, or medical detail. Even within that exception, machine text establishes neither verified speech nor the underlying event.

The complete contributor rules are maintained in the repository’s editorial policy.