Panchronica shows two kinds of content, and they are checked in two different ways. The site marks which is which, so you can tell how much weight a line can bear.
Much of the work described here (drafting, looking up sources and checking claims) is done with AI tools. That is why every claim is checked against a source: nothing is accepted on a tool's word alone.
Our own writing
Curated Checked claim by claim
The guide text for each territory, the era descriptions and the curated entries are written from sources and meant to be in our own words, never pasted from Wikipedia. Some older text that has not been re-checked yet follows Wikipedia's wording too closely; the re-check rewrites it.
Territory overviews
- An overview is broken down into its separate claims: every date, name, number and cause. Each claim is looked up in a source. None is waved through from memory, however familiar it seems.
- The check is a separate pass, not done by whoever wrote the text, and its job is to find the error. When it finds one, the text is corrected and the new wording is checked again, often more than once.
- Our record of a check is tied to the exact wording that was checked. If an overview is edited afterwards, it counts as unchecked again until it has been re-verified.
Curated entries
- Since August 2026, entries are drafted with a source noted for each claim, or with the claim flagged as unconfirmed. A second check then looks up every flagged or risky claim (firsts and superlatives, exact figures, contested names and dates) plus a random sample of the rest.
- If that sample turns up even one claim its source does not support, the whole batch is checked again from scratch.
What is not finished
Panchronica is young. Checking every overview this way is still under way, so some of our text has not had its independent check yet. If a sentence looks wrong to you, it may well be. Please tell us.
What we check against
Wikipedia, scholarly books and articles, other reference works, and official records such as treaty texts, court rulings and United Nations documents.
For contested or thinly documented claims we look beyond Wikipedia to scholarly or official sources. Checking has caught real mistakes in Wikipedia articles before they could reach our text.
From late September 2026, each newly verified overview's record also lists the sources the check used. For overviews checked earlier, the sources were recorded only where our logs kept them. That record is internal and not shown on the site.
Machine-collected records
Wikidata Source-linked, not hand-checked
Most of the dots on the map are records collected automatically from Wikidata and Wikipedia. Nobody here has read them one by one. Instead, every one of them carries a badge saying where it came from and a link you can follow to check it yourself.
- A record is only shown if it carries its Wikidata identifier and its source links and passes our automated checks. Each batch we bring in is also spot-checked against its sources on a random sample.
- If Wikidata or Wikipedia has a date wrong, it is wrong here too. That is why the source link is always there.
- The paragraph from Wikipedia in a popup is Wikipedia's own wording, credited and linked. We have not rewritten or fact-checked it.
Found an error?
Use the Report an error link at the bottom of the map page. We read every message. Please say which year you were looking at, and which territory or record.