Maintenance
Part of 5 things to check in community platforms
Community platforms facts from the ground up
Community platforms facts that a reader can check: the four parts of a claim, the five ways a claim fails, and the sources that settle each one.
What to take away
- A checkable fact line has four partsone subject, one property, the as-of date, and the evidence that settles it.
- The five failure modes are compound claims, missing dates, averaged claims stated as specifics, policy read as behavior, and inherited lines.
- Verified facts come from five sources: terms, pricing pages, help center, status record, and your own test community.
- Recheck every price and limit on a 90-day cycle, and keep the superseded value with its date.
- A claim nobody can settle is recorded as sought and not found, with the documents searched and the date.
The four parts of a fact line
Start with the subject: one thing, named the same way in every entry. Products rename themselves and split, so the record needs a stable key and a dated display name.
Keeping one name for one thing is what librarians call authority control. Skip it and one service becomes three entries.
Then the property: one assertion, not a bundle. "Supports export" hides what the export contains, who can run it, and which tier includes it.
Then the as-of date, meaning the day you read or tested the claim, not the day you published. Undated lines imply the date is now, which is almost never true.
Then the evidence: a document precise enough to find again, or a test precise enough to repeat.
Four parts in one sentence, and a reader can check it. The community platforms directory holds rows built this way.
Four Parts of a Fact Line
- Subjectone thing, stable key
- Propertyone assertion, not a bundle
- As-of datewhen the claim was true
- Evidencedocument or repeatable test
Example: rechecking a stale Circle price
The catalog's Circle row read: paid plans about $89 to $399 a month billed annually, read March 2025. A later recheck runs in this order.
- Open the Circle pricing page and note the date.
- Compare each figure with the tier names on the page, not with memory.
- If a rate moved, write a new line with the new date.
- If the annual rate hides behind a quote form, record that obstacle instead of estimating.
- Publish the old value with its date when the new one cannot be confirmed.
A superseded line stays in the record, because a price change is itself a fact. The row then reads: about $89 to $399 a month, read March 2025, recheck pending.
The five ways a fact line fails
Five ways a fact line fails
What it looks like
- Compound
- One sentence asserting three things, of which two were checked
- Undated
- A present-tense price with no month attached
- Averaged
- A paid-tier rate stated as if it covered the free plan
- Policy read as behavior
- The document says it and nobody tried it
- Inherited
- Copied from another catalog or article
The fix
- Compound
- Split into three lines and date each
- Undated
- Add the date you saw it, or recheck
- Averaged
- Name the tier and the region
- Policy read as behavior
- Say the document says it, or test it
- Inherited
- Go to the source document, or mark it unverified
Inherited is the contagious one. A catalog that copies another catalog is where one wrong sentence reaches twenty places. The method for matching a claim to the document that settles it is the antidote.
Five Ways a Fact Line Fails
Failure
- Compound
- Split into three lines
- Undated
- Add as-of date
- Averaged
- Name tier and region
- Policy read as behavior
- Say document says it
- Inherited
- Go to source document
Fix
- Compound
- Date each
- Undated
- Recheck if unsure
- Averaged
- State checked scope
- Policy read as behavior
- Or test and say tested
- Inherited
- Or mark unverified
Where verified facts about named platforms come from
The terms say what the operator may do to a community and its posts. Discord's terms reserve the right to remove content and close accounts. Deletion promises sit here too, and the FTC guidance on data security and disposal sets what a retention policy must cover.
Pricing pages say which capability sits behind which gate, and for which buyer. The enterprise page lists controls the ordinary page leaves out.
The help center says how a feature behaves when used. Slack's pages state that the free plan keeps 90 days of message history and allows 10 app integrations. Those pages are undated.
The status record shows reliability and the operator's habits when something breaks. Discord's status page logs outages with timestamps.
A test community shows what a new organizer gets. A free Discord server exposes the defaults and the limits. It is the only source that can contradict the others.
Named platform lines, dated and sourced
| Subject | One property | As of | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Discourse | Open-source forum software under GPL v2; self-hosting costs nothing | Mar 2025 | License file |
| Slack | Free plan keeps 90 days of message history and 10 app integrations | Mar 2025 | Help and pricing pages |
| Discord | Free servers with unlimited members; Nitro listed at $9.99 a month | Mar 2025 | Pricing page |
| Free to read; Premium listed at $5.99 a month | Mar 2025 | Pricing page | |
| Circle | Paid plans about $89 to $399 a month billed annually | Mar 2025 | Pricing page |
| Skool | $99 a month flat for the owner, with no platform fee | Mar 2025 | Pricing page |
| Facebook Groups | Free; the Groups API stopped returning member lists in 2019 | Mar 2025 | Platform changelog |
| XenForo | Self-hosted license about $160 in year one, renewal near $55 | Mar 2025 | Sales page |
Every row carries one subject, one property, the date it was read and where it came from. These are the catalog's last read values, not current list rates, so treat each as dated evidence rather than a live price. The four structural axes file the same platforms by structure instead of price.
Claims that cannot be made checkable
Some questions have no outside answer: how many paying members a platform has, how long a private community keeps a deleted thread, how many staff answer reports. Record each as sought and not found, with the document classes searched and the date.
That record stops the next editor repeating the search, and it tells a reader the claim is unsupported rather than contested.
Running the check before publishing
Pass every sentence in a draft through five questions.
- Does it name one subject?
- Does it assert one property?
- Does it carry an as-of date?
- Does it point at a document or a described test?
- Would a stranger land on the same meaning?
This is data validation applied to prose: a short rule set a value must satisfy before it enters the record. "Slack's free plan is limited" fails question four. "Slack's free plan keeps 90 days of message history" passes, because the help page shows the number.
A line that carries its date is already half an event, which is how the platform timeline gets built. A line without one can never join a history.
Common questions
Is a quotation from the terms a fact?
It is a fact about what the document says, which you want, but not a fact about what happens. Keep the two labelled and separate.
What if the operator disputes an entry?
Record the dispute, quoted and dated, beside the claim and its evidence. If the operator shows the claim was wrong, correct it and keep the old value visible with the reason. If they dispute only the emphasis, the entry stands and the dispute is published next to it.
Which platforms can a beginner check for free?
Discourse is free to self-host under GPL v2. Discord and Facebook Groups cost nothing to start, and Slack's free plan keeps 90 days of history.
How many facts should an entry carry?
As many as trace to a source, and no more. A dozen sourced lines beat forty confident ones.
