Methodology
How Timepath works
Timepath is the front page of history: curated timelines of the world, and of every person, place and organization in it, built on one rule. Nothing appears without published reporting behind it.
Where events come from
Journalists report the news on their own publications — from international wires and newspapers to local outlets. Timepath's automated engine reads that reporting and curates it into timeline events: for the World Timeline, one defining event per day — the occurrence most likely to appear in future history books — and for each subject's Timepath, only the moments that shaped its story.
Every event links the published articles it was built from. You can always click through and read the original reporting — the sources are the point, not a footnote.
How everything links
A single piece of reporting connects four things on Timepath. Follow the chain from the article you can read to the timelines it shapes — and note that every publisher and every journalist is a Timepath in its own right.
Published article
The reporting
on the publisher's own site
Event
A verified moment
backed by its cited sources
Subject Timepaths
The story it shapes
the people, places & orgs it affects
Open a source's publisher or reporter anywhere on Timepath to see their Timepath — the full record of what their journalism has shaped. When a reporter or outlet isn't on Timepath yet, it stays plain text until it is.
What "Verified by N sources" means
The badge counts the published articles an event cites. The consensus meter next to it turns that count into a scale more independent reporting on the same occurrence means higher consensus. These are our exact thresholds:
| Cited sources | Consensus | Meter |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Reported | |
| 2 | Corroborated | |
| 3–5 | Strong | |
| 6–9 | High | |
| 10+ | Very high |
Older events are still being enriched with their source data; when an event has no source record yet, its trust badges simply don't show we never fabricate a number.
What we never do
- ·No user posts. Readers explore, follow and share nobody can write onto a timeline, so there is nothing to moderate and no viral noise.
- ·Journalists don't write on Timepath either. Their work lives on their own publications; Timepath maps it. Verified journalists get an automated portfolio of impact, never a publishing tool.
- ·No event without a citation. If the reporting isn't there, neither is the event. A short timeline means the story has few defining moments not that we ran out of content.
Don't take our word for it
Every claim on Timepath is checkable: open any event's sources and read the original reporting. As newsrooms publish corrections and follow-ups, our engine re-visits events and their sources on a rolling basis.