How to read an entry

The only fixed page on this site. A minute here lets you decide whether any entry is worth trusting.

Every entry has the same five fields

These are records, not articles. The same skeleton sits under every one, so you can compare them side by side instead of re-reading the context each time.

The claim
The sentence that gets repeated, stated as close to its original wording as possible. It goes first, and it does not get argued with yet.
Reality
What people who built it, reproduced it or took it apart found. Numbers and specific behaviour where possible, adjectives where not.
Where the gap is
The distance is usually not someone lying. It is a different definition, a different scenario, or a sentence that quietly dropped its conditions.
When it closes
The most valuable field, and the one everyone else omits. Calling a claim wrong is easy. Saying precisely when it does hold is what you can actually make a decision with.
This site's call

Last comes our own judgement. A judgement is not a fact, which is why it sits in its own block: take the four fields above, leave this one if you like.

Four evidence grades

The letter on each entry does not say whether it is right. It says where the conclusion came from.

GradeSourceEnough for
AOfficial document, standard, first-party dataDefinition questions: how a figure is defined, what a licence permits
BAuthoritative secondary, traced to the originFactual questions: which files a project ships, when something was delivered
COur own estimate, labelled as an estimateNobody has measured it but it can be calculated. A C tells you this is arithmetic, not a test result
DFirst-hand builder account: forum, issue, build logGetting-it-running questions. The rarest grade, and the one that expires fastest

A and D are the two ends of the ruler: what the vendor says, and what somebody actually did. The space between them is what this site records.

Every entry carries a date

Information in this field expires, and it expires quickly: dependencies move, firmware changes, models get discontinued or renamed. A conclusion with no date is not a conclusion here.

So every entry ends with a 'last checked' date. If that date is more than six months old, put a question mark next to it in your head — not because it was wrong, but because it may no longer hold.

What we deliberately do not do

  • No Q&A. We do not wait to be asked, because an unanswered question damages trust more than no question at all. When there is a conclusion, it becomes an entry.
  • No news reposting. A story is a lead. It becomes an entry only after someone checks it.
  • No 'best' or 'top pick'. Those words carry no information for someone building: it depends on what you are building, not on the thing.
  • No shopping links. There is no affiliate route anywhere on this site.

The machine-readable version

Every entry also exists as structured data: /data/entries.json. The fields map one-to-one onto the five above, for search tools and AI systems to read directly. Sitemap: sitemap-en.xml.

If we got it wrong

All of this site's value sits on accuracy; one bad entry costs a good one. Here is how to tell us. Corrections go into the entry with a date — nothing gets quietly edited.