Methodology
This page explains exactly how the numbers you see on issue and petition pages are calculated, so you can judge their credibility for yourself.
- What counts as a submitted report
- Any incident report a resident completes and sends, whether or not it has been verified or moderated yet.
- What counts as a verified report
- A submitted report where the submitter has confirmed their email address via a one-time link.
- What counts as an affected household
- A verified report that has been approved by a moderator and is not excluded from statistics or marked as an anonymous tip. Each household is counted once per issue, based on the submitting email address.
- What counts as a petition supporter
- A petition signature where the signer has verified their email address and has not withdrawn it. Petition supporters are always counted separately from affected households — signing a petition does not automatically create an incident report, and vice versa.
- How duplicates are handled
- Moderators review potential duplicate signals (same normalized email, similar description, same image, same date/location) but never automatically reject legitimate residents from the same household or shared network.
- How repeat incidents are calculated
- A report is counted as a repeat incident only when the submitting resident indicates the problem has happened more than once, and the report has been approved.
- When statistics are updated
- Statistics are calculated live from the current state of the database each time a page loads — there is no separate manually-updated total.
- What is not independently verified
- Email verification confirms control of an email address and intent to submit — it does not prove residency, prove the described event occurred, or independently confirm any factual claim in a report. Moderators review for plausibility and adherence to community standards, not for legal proof.
- How geographic privacy is protected
- Only street names (not house numbers) or general neighborhood areas are collected for public display. Groups smaller than a minimum threshold are suppressed from public geographic breakdowns to avoid identifying a household.