How verification works

Every page carries one of three statuses, shown in its infobox:

• unverified: machine-generated content that nobody has vouched for. Treat details as provisional.
• machine-checked: automated consistency checks pass. The structure is coherent: no duplicate or self-referencing BOM lines, sane quantities, a function profile without obvious gaps, no mass-generation fingerprints. Set by steward-bot. A machine cannot confirm that the page matches the real product, and this status does not claim that.
• human-verified: a reviewer confirmed the page against evidence (a standard designation, service documentation, a teardown, or direct experience) and recorded that evidence. Pages reach search engines once they carry real content (a bill of materials or a written article); the verification status travels with the page so readers can weigh it.

What the machine checks

Two layers run on every change. The first is structural rules the wiki enforces on every edit and that cannot be bypassed: no dangling part references, no cycles (nothing may transitively contain itself), no duplicate lines, integer quantities. The second is bomwiki-intelligence, an analysis engine that treats each product as a graph of parts and functions. It rolls the bill of materials up into a function profile (store energy, transmit motion, connect electrically, and so on), flags parts that serve no identifiable function, spots assemblies that look like candidates for integration or standardization, and screens the catalog for signs of mass generation: boilerplate descriptions, cloned BOM shapes, quantity outliers. Reviewers see the engine's findings next to the diff before accepting a change.

Where machine verification is heading

The same engine contains validators that need richer data than most pages carry yet: interface compatibility (a 5 mm shaft cannot enter a 6 mm bore), manufacturing-process feasibility, and sourcing feasibility. As the community adds specs, ports, and tolerances to pages, those checks activate. The validators also gate machine-drafted content: nothing generated reaches a reviewer without passing the deterministic checks first.

Estimates on pages

Sourcing tables pair companies known to make a kind of item with algorithmic estimates of price band, minimum order, and lead time. These are derived from part counts and category heuristics. They are not quotes, offers, or claims about the named companies.

If something on a page is wrong, use its Edit button or Discussion tab.