How We Verify

This is the trust page — the promise every other page on this site depends on.

The promise

Every factual claim we publish carries a date and a source. Not "recently." Not "according to reports." A date you can read and a source you can check.

The claim taxonomy

Everything on this site is labeled, explicitly or by render rule, with one of these:

• VERIFIED — checked against an authoritative source (agency page, operator, official document) on a known date. The date is shown.
• SOURCE-BACKED BUT TIME-SENSITIVE — verified, but the fact rots fast: fees, hours, statuses, event dates. These re-verify on our shortest cycle, and the verification date tells you how fresh it is.
• REQUIRES LOCAL VERIFICATION — we have a lead but not a source. It renders with its unverified state visible, or it's held from public pages entirely. Never silently published as fact.
• EDITORIAL INTERPRETATION — our judgment, clearly framed as judgment: "the best bad-weather answer," "the classic day trip." Interpretation is allowed; it's never disguised as fact.
• PROPOSAL — our suggestion, labeled as such. Rare, and always marked.
• UNKNOWN — we looked, we found nothing authoritative, and we say so. Unknown is a first-class state, not a gap to fill with inference.

Conflicts are preserved, not resolved

When sources disagree — the mansion's address, a death date, a restoration cost — we publish both, with both sources, and flag the conflict. We don't pick the one that makes the copy cleaner. Verifiers resolve conflicts; until then, both stand.

Freshness tiers

Not all facts rot at the same speed. Our verification cycles run on three tiers:

• VERY perishable (re-check within days): event dates and statuses, tonight's music listings, beach fees and hours, ferry facts, pier statuses, weather/safety source links.
• MODERATELY perishable (re-check within ~30 days): restaurant and bar hours, bait shop inventory claims, marina services, rental-car rosters, airport ground transport.
• SLOWER perishable (re-check within ~90 days): public-land fees, historical facts, origin-market data, timelines.

A page's "updated" date means a human made a meaningful editorial change — never just a site rebuild. Rebuilds don't make unchanged pages look newly edited.

We don't publish what we can't verify

No invented businesses, hours, prices, events, history, safety advice, quotations, or reviews. No scored ratings without real reviews. No implying a regional place (Mustang Island, Port Aransas, Aransas National Wildlife Refuge) is in Rockport — in copy, titles, or descriptions. Ever.

The correction path

Found something wrong? Use the correction intake. Every submission goes to a moderation queue; every accepted correction updates the verification date. Business owners can attest to their own facts through the same form — correcting an existing listing, not creating one. The audit trail records every change: who, what, old, new, when, and source. No silent edits to verified claims. Ever.