Would you
publish this?

The model behind the game

A source has a job. Ask whether it is the right source for the claim.

An official venue page can be a strong primary source for that venue’s own schedule. A public filing can be a strong source for what the filing actually records. A verified artist or label announcement can establish what that account formally announced. None of those sources automatically proves unrelated private intentions, future plans, or fan theories.

This is why “official” is not a magic word. The useful question is narrower: official for what? A platform account may be authoritative about its own product update but not about a private contract. A fan video may document what the camera captured but still need verification of location, time, authorship, and context.

Use social media as a lead, not a shortcut.

The Associated Press describes verification as a process that can include corroborating facts with documents and named sources, checking visual metadata and context, authenticating user-generated material, and contacting original creators. Reuters similarly emphasizes accuracy, transparent sourcing, and correcting errors clearly.

For a fan publication, the same principle can be scaled down without pretending to be a newsroom. If a claim originates on social media, find the earliest trace you can, identify the account, look for a direct source, compare independent evidence, and label uncertainty. If you cannot establish enough context, the responsible outcome can simply be: do not publish it as fact.

A screenshot is evidence of an image, not automatically evidence of the event it describes.

Screenshots are easy to crop, restyle, repost, and detach from their original timestamps or account history. A screenshot can be useful as a lead, but the original URL, archive, poster identity, time, and surrounding context are much more informative than the image alone.

That does not mean every screenshot is fake. It means provenance matters. The more consequential the claim, the more important it is to find independent support instead of using visual polish as a substitute for verification.

Corroboration is stronger when the sources are genuinely independent.

Ten accounts repeating the same unsourced post are not ten independent sources. The repetition may trace back to one original claim. Corroboration becomes more meaningful when different reporting paths, documents, witnesses, or primary records support the same fact.

This is also why attribution matters. If another publication did the reporting, name it and link it. Rewriting the same claim without attribution does not make it original reporting; it removes useful information from the reader.

Corrections are part of credibility, not an admission that a site failed.

New information can change a story. A schedule may be updated, a public figure may clarify a statement, or an earlier record may contain an error. A correction policy gives the archive a way to improve without pretending the earlier version never existed.

TayTV’s preferred pattern is to update the factual statement, preserve a visible date where useful, and explain what changed when the correction is meaningful. That approach respects readers who may have seen or shared the earlier version.

Why Source Detective has no ads.

This page contains substantial educational text, but the interactive case desk is still a behavior-focused tool. TayTV keeps ads off the page so the exercise stays clean and so the site does not depend on monetizing every interactive screen. Google’s publisher policies distinguish valuable publisher content from low-value or behavior-only screens; TayTV uses that distinction conservatively.

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