Editorial standards and reconstruction methodology

Who publishes this

Articles are published by The HistoryGuesser editorial team — the small team that builds and runs HistoryGuesser. We do not attribute articles to named individual historians, because doing so would misrepresent how they are produced. Where an article relies on a specialist work, that work is named in “Where to read more” on the article itself rather than implied through a byline.

We do not publish guest posts, sponsored articles or affiliate placements in the history collection.

How an article is put together

Each moment starts from a fixed, checkable core: a place, a set of coordinates and a year. Around that we write the scene as it was documented — who was present, what the surroundings looked like, what happened next — and a short timeline of the events immediately before and after.

Drafting is assisted by AI tools and then edited by us. Every article is held to the same structural checks before it can ship: a minimum length, a documented timeline, concrete figures rather than vague ones, and a “what people get wrong” section that states a common misconception and what the record actually shows. Those checks run automatically in our test suite, so an article that falls below them cannot be published.

We would rather publish a smaller collection that holds up than a large one that does not. Where we cannot substantiate something, we leave it out.

The 360° scenes are reconstructions

The panoramas are illustrated reconstructions generated from the documented place, date and description of the moment. They are not photographs, and for moments that predate photography no photograph could exist. They are labelled as reconstructions wherever they appear at article length.

Treat them as an aid to imagining the arrangement of a scene — a shoreline, a skyline, a crowd — not as visual evidence. Faces, signage and fine detail are illustrative. Where a scene would have to invent a specific identifiable person to work, we build the scene without them.

Sources and dates

“Where to read more” lists further reading for an article. We link only to material we can point at directly — museum and archive collections, university and library resources, primary documents, and established reference works. We do not fabricate citations, and an item we cannot verify is named without a link rather than linked to a plausible-looking URL.

Published and last-reviewed dates on articles come from our repository history — the record of when the text actually entered the site and when it was last edited. They are recorded per collection file, so several articles revised together share a date. We do not refresh those dates to look recent.

Corrections

If something on this site is wrong, tell us and we will fix it. Write to us through the contact page with the page address and what is inaccurate; a source helps but is not required.

Factual errors are corrected in the text and the article's last-reviewed date moves with the edit. Where a correction changes the substance of what an article claimed, we say so in the article rather than editing silently. Scenes that misrepresent a moment are regenerated or removed.

Advertising and independence

HistoryGuesser is funded by optional Pro subscriptions, credit purchases and advertising on editorial pages. Advertising is never placed inside gameplay, account or administrative screens, and advertisers have no involvement in what we write or which moments we cover.