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WhatIs.site

Methodology

How we source statistics, fact-check claims, and handle updates. This is the editorial standard we hold ourselves to.

One-line version

We aggregate; we don't survey. Every statistic links to its primary source. Pages are dated, and we refresh statistics roundups quarterly.

Sources we trust

Our statistics pages prioritize, in roughly this order:

  1. Government statistics bureaus — US BLS, BEA, NCES, CDC, NIMH, EPA, NOAA, NASA; UK ONS; Eurostat; OECD; IEA; IPCC.
  2. Independent research institutions — Stanford HAI, Pew Research Center, Kaiser Family Foundation, Brookings, RAND, Mental Health America, AFSP, Federal Reserve and FRED data series.
  3. Peer-reviewed publications — Nature, Science, NEJM, Lancet, JAMA, and similar.
  4. Industry research with disclosed methodology — McKinsey, BCG, Bain, IDC, Gartner, Chainalysis. Cited when methodology is disclosed and the firm has a track record; treated with more caution than government or academic sources.
  5. Primary corporate filings — 10-K reports, earnings calls, investor presentations. Used for numbers companies disclose themselves.

We avoid: aggregator sites that obscure original sources, anonymous "industry insider" reports, paywalled summaries we can't verify, and any source whose methodology isn't disclosed.

How a statistics page gets written

  1. Topic selection — based on search demand, citation potential, and gaps in existing 2026-dated coverage. We don't write roundups on topics where Wikipedia, government agencies, or established explainer sites already do a definitive job — only where there's a clear opportunity to do better, fresher, or more accessibly.
  2. Source collection — we identify 8–15 primary publications, prefer the most recent edition, and pull headline numbers with their methodology context.
  3. Drafting — every claim is paired with a source link. Numerics include the year and methodology source.
  4. Editorial review — a human editor verifies each numeric claim against the cited source.
  5. Publish — with the publication date stamped in the page header and structured data.
  6. Quarterly refresh — we re-check each statistic against the most recent source release. Outdated numbers are updated and the dateModified field is bumped.

How an explainer article gets written

  1. Pick a clear definition that works as the opening sentence — what we'd want an AI search engine or a 14-year-old reader to quote.
  2. Outline the structure: definition, why it matters, how it works, real-world examples, FAQ.
  3. Draft. AI tools are used in drafting and research, but every article is reviewed by a human editor.
  4. Add 2–5 external links to authoritative sources, plus 5–10 internal links to related articles.
  5. Write the FAQ — at least three questions, each answer self-contained and citation-worthy.
  6. Editorial review for accuracy, voice, and humanization compliance (we have an explicit banned-words list to avoid corporate-blog clichés).
  7. Publish, monitor reader feedback, update as needed.

Limitations we want you to know about

  • We aggregate. We don't conduct primary research, run surveys, or commission studies. Everything cited is from someone who did.
  • Statistics decay. A 2026 stat is current today. Three years from now, the page should either be updated or marked stale. Our quarterly refresh policy is the mitigation.
  • Source citation is best-effort. Some industry research is published in PDFs without stable URLs. We link to the most stable source we can find and note when a citation is to a snapshot.
  • We are not the original source. If you need to cite a number for academic or legal purposes, cite the primary source we link to — not WhatIs.site.

AI use disclosure

We use AI tools for drafting, structure, fact-finding, and editing — including state-of-the-art large language models like Claude and GPT-4o. Every article and statistics page is reviewed by a human editor before publication. Numbers are verified against named primary sources. We do not publish AI-generated content unchecked.

Corrections

Email hello@whatis.site with the URL and the specific claim you'd like reviewed. Include the source you're using if you have one. We respond within a few business days. Statistics corrections happen out-of-cycle (not waiting for the quarterly refresh); explainer corrections may be batched but are always acknowledged.

How to cite us

Every statistics roundup includes APA and plain-text citation snippets at the bottom of the page. For explainer articles, a generic citation:

WhatIs.site Editorial. (year). Article title. WhatIs.site. https://whatis.site/slug

Standard academic-and-editorial use is welcomed without permission. For bulk republication or derivative datasets, please email first.