Editorial Policy

What we promise readers.

How KnowThePerch handles sourcing, AI-generated content, fact-checking, and corrections. This is the reader-facing contract.

AI Disclosure

We use AI for prose. We never use AI for data.

If you’re reading a species profile, state guide, or comparison page, the descriptive text was generated by a locally-hosted language model (Qwen3) based on verified data, then reviewed by a human editor before publication.

AI writes

Descriptive paragraphs about behavior, habitat preferences, identification tips, and seasonal patterns.

AI never writes

Measurements, species counts, conservation status, frequency percentages, hotspot names, taxonomy, or any numerical claim. Those come from APIs.

Blog posts and birding guides are written by human authors without AI generation.

Fact-Checking

Data is validated at publication time.

Measurements, taxonomy, conservation status, and observation data are validated against source APIs when each page is generated. AI-generated text is checked against the injected data for consistency.

If prose contradicts the source data — for example, claiming a species is “common” when eBird frequency shows it below 5% — the text is rejected and regenerated. The data always wins.

Sourcing

Three categories of content.

Data-sourced fields
Taxonomy, measurements, IUCN status, observation frequency, hotspot names, audio embeds. These are pulled from APIs and stored in SQLite. They are never generated, estimated, or rounded by the content pipeline.
AI-assisted prose
Descriptive text that explains facts from the data layer. Generated by Qwen3 with structured prompts, constrained by data injection, and reviewed before publication. Applies to programmatic pages (profiles, comparisons, state pages).
Human-written editorial
Blog posts, birding guides, and brand pages. Written by human authors without AI generation. Subject to the same factual accuracy standards as programmatic pages.
Corrections

How errors are fixed.

If you find incorrect information on any page — a wrong measurement, outdated conservation status, or a prose claim that contradicts the data — contact us with the page URL and the specific error.

We review correction requests within 5 business days. Confirmed errors are corrected at the source (database or prompt template), not patched in the rendered page. The page is then regenerated and the updated date is revised.

This means the same error cannot recur on future pages built from the same data source.

Report an error →
Updates

When data refreshes.

Species taxonomy Annually with eBird taxonomy release
Conservation status When IUCN publishes revised assessments
Observation frequency Quarterly from eBird bar charts
Audio recordings On species profile creation or update
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