Every Source a Short Answer Rests On

Until November 1, 2026, our short answers could show at most twelve of the claims each answer rested on. Under every answer, a fold called What this rests on lists those claims: each a quote from its source, under the source’s name, linked to it, with an address of its own that a reader or a machine can cite. Twelve was a ceiling, and on 90 of our 150 answers it was full while the answer rested on more.

That ceiling is gone. A short answer now shows a claim for every piece of evidence its answer rests on. With this change, 3,191 claims were added across 146 answers, each a quote taken word for word from a record the answer already used, under that record’s name and linked to it.

What a reader will see

A longer list behind the fold, and a fuller one. Some of the new claims are short: a weight from a maker’s page, the date a rule took effect, a line from one owner’s review. They are there because the answer states them, and a reader who wants to check one can open its source from the claim itself.

Four claims on two answers used to print their source’s bold type as code, the tags showing as characters. They now print in bold, the way the research pages they quote print them.

Where we still fall short

Measured on the day of writing, 236 pieces of evidence the answers rest on are not yet shown as claims. 55 are quotes longer than one claim can hold, 60 carry formatting from the page they were copied from, 84 come from a source not yet named and linked the way a claim needs, 8 no longer match their source as we now hold it, 28 quote a health or safety word our own answer does not use, and one holds a character our importer drops. Each needs a person’s hand, a cut to whole sentences, the source named from its own page or a reading of its own before it may show, and that work comes next.

Later note, 1 November 2026: each of those 236 has now been read by hand. 153 show as claims, 60 of them cut to the words that carry what the answer rests on, each named and linked to its source. 83 are left out on purpose: 47 whose words sit inside the source’s own links, which a claim would print as code; 17 that are our own words rather than a source’s; 13 that only repeat a source’s title, date or citation; 2 that our own record has since corrected; and 4 for reasons of their own. The reason for each is kept with its answer’s record.

123 more are left out on purpose: figures we calculated rather than quoted, a source’s own title, author or date where the fold already names that source, and bare numbers with no word to read them by.