How are new sources approved on Housing Market Insights?
Automatically. Every source gets a trust score from 0 to 100: a high score approves it, a low score rejects it, and a score in between puts it on probation.
No person approves or rejects a source by hand. Each source gets a trust score from 0 to 100, built from five things:
- what kind of organisation it is, for example a statistics office or a news site
- how often its figures agree with sources that are already trusted
- how up to date its figures are
- how structured its data is
- its track record over time
A high score approves the source and a low score rejects it. Sources in between go on probation. Where a source’s identity is unclear, an automated check also looks at who owns the website, whether it cites official data, whether it explains its methods and whether reputable sites refer to it.
Official government websites on each country’s own list are approved automatically, as long as they publish at least one housing metric and their figures do not disagree with trusted sources. Approval only means a source may be used: each of its figures must still be confirmed by a second, independent source before it is shown.
Every decision is recorded with the score and the reasons behind it.