Check information
Product promise
Take one statement and its source context through a bounded assessment. Understand which questions were evaluated, what each result says, and what its receipt lets you inspect later.
One statement, not an entire controversy
Consider the Volkswagen diesel-emissions record. An EPA violation notice concerning 2.0-liter diesel vehicles and a California Air Resources Board archive supply identifiable regulatory material. They do not answer every question about every model, executive, consumer claim, or later remedy.
Select a precise proposition: The September 2015 EPA notice accused specified Volkswagen vehicles of using software to circumvent emissions testing requirements. This is a claim about what the notice alleges. It is not the same as asserting that a particular vehicle, officer or case was independently adjudicated under every subsequent law.
Prepare, run and inspect
- Write the exact statement and attach the particular source document, not merely a link to the Volkswagen topic.
- Review the input before running Check: statement, source identity or URL, expected question scope, data shared with the operation, and account requirements. An imported answer may have lost its citation; restore or replace the missing source context explicitly.
- Execute Check using the actual enabled interface and authorized identity. A prepared input alone is not a completed assessment.
Read the scoped result
- Open the returned result and read each named question with its recorded outcome, reason and source evidence. Whether a quote matches, a cited page resolves, or the source supports the proposition are different questions.
Inspect the receipt separately
- Inspect the associated receipt when issued. It records the performed operation and its bounded result, not a universal verdict about the scandal.
- Finish with the exact statement, source edition, per-question outcome and a link or permitted retrieval reference for returning to the result.
Expected result: you can explain what was assessed and what remains unevaluated without converting a valid reference into proof of a broader conclusion.
When Check does not conclude
Distinguish four conditions: a question not evaluated, a question evaluated but unresolved, an operation refused under policy or access rules, and an execution failure. These are different statuses and require different next actions. A technically successful receipt integrity check is also separate from rerunning the original assessment.
If your research task was simply to identify the EPA notice and cite its contents, you can finish without Check. The full Check tutorial is for the additional assessment task; evidence and uncertainty explains the distinctions in more detail.
Related manual chapters
- Using Counterpedia Check — run and interpret a Check.
- Evidence and uncertainty — understand the assessment’s scope and limits.
- Saving, citing, sharing, and exporting — preserve and reuse the result.