History deserves receipts.
The internet is filling up with confident, machine-generated claims about the past — plausible, polished, and unsourced. SourcedStory is built the other way around: a home for explorable timelines where every claim carries its evidence, and the quality of that evidence is graded and visible.
How trust works here
The unit of trust is a single claim — one event, with its sources attached. Every source is automatically graded against a curated registry of archives, journals, and institutions, and each event wears the grade of its strongest source. Timelines show what share of their events are backed by high-quality evidence.
Claims without sources aren’t hidden — they’re flagged. Authors label their own confidence (well-documented, debated, estimated), and drafts stay private until an author deliberately publishes; readers only ever see the version an author chose to stand behind.
The five tiers
- 1 · Primary sourceOriginal documents and artifacts — national archives, treaty texts, museum collection records, first-hand publications.
- 2 · Peer-reviewedPeer-reviewed journals and academic publishers — Nature, PNAS, university presses, indexed research.
- 3 · Reputable sourceInstitutions with editorial accountability — NASA, the WHO, national museums and libraries, .edu and .gov sources.
- 4 · General sourceNamed books, news organizations, and encyclopedic references — solid, but a step from the original evidence.
- 5 · Unverified sourcePersonal sites and unrecognized domains. Allowed, but labeled honestly so you can judge for yourself.
Flagship SourcedStory timelines hold themselves to the same standard: every cited link is verified before publishing, and corrections are welcome. Community corroboration and dispute tools are on the roadmap.
Independent, by design
SourcedStory is independently built and self-funded — no ad networks, no engagement algorithms, no content farm. It stays sustainable through optional paid plans for creators, so the incentive is simple: be worth trusting.
See it in practice
Open any event on any timeline — the evidence is right there.