Verification and Ranking Methodology

This page describes the standard a club fact has to meet before it appears as verified, and explains why the directory presents clubs without a ranked order.

Evidence hierarchy#

Not all sources are equal. Facts are accepted in this order of preference.

1. Club-controlled published sources — the club's own website, its published membership documents, its notice of race and sailing instructions, its official social accounts and its registration or booking system.
2. Governing body records — affiliation listings, training centre registers and program directories published by the national or state sailing body.
3. Class association records — for fleet and class presence, where the association publishes club-level information.
4. Direct confirmation from the club — a response from a listed official or administrator.

Third-party aggregators, review sites, forum posts and news articles are treated as leads to be confirmed, not as sources in their own right.

What counts as verification#

A fact is verified when a named source confirmed it on a recorded date. That date is stored with the fact, not with the club as a whole, because a club's address may be stable for a decade while its junior program changes every season.

Absence of evidence is never recorded as absence of the feature. If a club's website does not mention boat storage, storage is Not verified — not No. Recording it as No would penalise exactly the small volunteer clubs whose web presence is thinnest, which is the opposite of useful.

Confidence and re-checking#

Facts decay at different rates, so they are re-checked on different cycles.

• Stable — address, waterway, club type, affiliation status. Long re-check interval.
• Seasonal — training program availability, race calendar, current season dates, active classes. Re-checked around the start of the sailing season.
• Volatile — fees, contact people, storage availability, program bookings. Treated as indicative even when recently checked, and always presented as something to confirm with the club.

A record that has passed its re-check window is flagged rather than deleted, and a record with almost no useful verified content is kept out of the index rather than published as a thin page.

Why there is no ranking#

A ranked list implies that the ranked items are comparable on a shared measure. Australian sailing clubs are not.

A small beach club with fifteen active dinghies and an outstanding junior program is not worse than a large harbour club with a marina and a restaurant. They are answering different questions. Ordering them would require either a fabricated quality score or a proxy — size, facilities, fee level — that quietly misrepresents what most people are actually choosing between.

Instead, the directory:

• separates club type, boat type, sailing type, program and facility into independent filters
• shows verification status openly, including where data is missing
• explains the trade-offs in the editorial layer so you can weigh them yourself
• sorts results by neutral orders such as alphabetical, proximity or recency of verification

If a ranked comparison is ever published, it will state the measure, the data behind it, the date, and the clubs excluded for lack of comparable data.

No paid placement#

Listing position, inclusion and verification status are not for sale. A club correcting or completing its own record does not gain ranking advantage from doing so — it simply produces a more accurate page.