Community confirmation methodology

In short

Each report is compared with others of the same family of phenomena. When a report is supported by at least 10 compatible contributions, sent from different accounts that pass the anti-abuse checks, it can be published as “Community confirmed”.

“Community confirmed” means many people described something compatible at the same time and in the same area. It is not a scientific confirmation and does not identify what the phenomenon was.

How two reports are compared

1. Family of phenomena: meteors, fireballs and luminous phenomena are compared with each other; satellites, comets, atmospheric and unidentified phenomena each within their own group.
2. Time: the difference between observation times must be within the category's window (table below).
3. Distance: the distance between the observers' areas must be within the category's limit.
4. Similarity: a 0–1 score combines closeness in time (35%), in space (20%), category (15%), direction (10%), duration (10%) and colours (10%). At least 0.5 is required.

Direction only matters for nearby observers (under 50 km): from distant cities the same fireball is legitimately seen in different directions.

Independence checks

• The original report never counts as support for itself.
• Each account counts at most once; further submissions from the same account are discarded and flagged.
• Only accounts with a verified e-mail, created at least 24 hours before submitting, count.
• Several accounts from the same network count as one and block automatic publication.
• Nearly identical descriptions from different accounts are treated as copies.
• Many young accounts submitting within minutes of each other block automatic publication.
• Three abuse reports on a published sighting send it back to review.

What we cannot guarantee

GAIA cannot prove that ten accounts belong to ten different people, nor that observations are independent of each other (for example if someone read other people's reports on social media). That is why the site speaks of “compatible contributions”, not “independent witnesses”.

Report statuses

• Awaiting matches: no compatible report yet.
• Automatic verification: compatible reports exist but the threshold is not reached.
• Community confirmed: threshold reached with no anomalies; public page.
• In review: threshold reached with anomalies, a category that requires human review, or flagged by users.
• Not confirmed: threshold not reached within 7 days, or rejected by a moderator.
• Archived: closed by a moderator.

Privacy

Positions are rounded to cells of about 11 km before any comparison. Public pages only show the place names chosen by observers, the approximate area and anonymous excerpts of descriptions.

各类别规则

这些规则与服务器使用的配置相同。自动发布的阈值为 10 份吻合报告。