How we source, verify and archive

The source ladder

When we state a fact, we cite the highest rung available and we say which rung it is.

1. Primary official. State House, the ministries, the National Bureau of Statistics, Immigration and Civil Status, the National Assembly, the Government Gazette, and the consolidated laws of Seychelles on SeyLII with their canonical citation URIs.
2. International institutional. UN DESA, IOM, the World Bank, UNESCO. These carry documented methodologies of their own.
3. Academic and archival. Published histories, the Seychelles National Archives, the colonial series at Kew, the French records at the Archives nationales d'outre-mer.
4. Reputable reference and press. Encyclopaedic sources and news coverage, used as cross-checks and clearly identified, never as the sole basis for a hard number.

We do not source facts from blogs, content farms or unattributed aggregators. When our only available source is a tertiary one, the page says so plainly.

The two-source rule

One confirming source is a hypothesis. For load-bearing facts, a population figure, an officeholder, a legal requirement, a date, we look for a second independent source before publishing. When we cannot find one, we either say "single source" in the text or we do not publish the claim.

Numbers are dated, always

Statistics on this site carry their vintage. "36,788 Seychellois abroad" is not a timeless truth, it is UN DESA's 2020 estimate, and it is labelled that way everywhere it appears. When a newer release supersedes an old one, we update the number and the page history records the change.

When sources disagree

They do, more often than people expect. A UN model estimate of emigrants and a destination country's census can differ by thousands, because they measure differently. Our rule is to show the disagreement, explain why it exists, and say which figure we lead with and why. A reference that hides its uncertainty is advertising, not reference.

Archived citations

Links rot. Every source in our registry carries both its live link and a copy archived with the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, requested when we first cite it. If an original disappears, the citation still resolves. We patrol the registry for dead links and repoint to archives when needed.

Our own data

Some numbers on this site are ours: the registry counts, the community directory, the events calendar. These are labelled as our own registry data and they are honest to a fault. Counts start at zero and only real members move them. We never seed, pad or estimate our own numbers.

Review cycles

Every reference page states when it was published, when it was last reviewed, and on what cycle it is re-checked. Time-sensitive pages run faster cycles: the cabinet within days of any change, visa tables quarterly, statistical pages on their sources' release schedules.

Corrections

When we get something wrong, we fix it visibly and log it on the corrections page. Errors are inevitable. Hiding them would be a choice.

How this site is made

Seychelles Abroad is researched, written and built with the help of AI tools, under the direction and editorial responsibility of its founder, Salim Mathieu. Every published fact is checked against the cited source, and the verification discipline described on this page applies to every page regardless of how the first draft was produced. The method is what we ask you to judge us on.