Sources and citation policy

Facts are taken from the most direct source available, in this order:

1. Official and government records. City and county websites and meeting records, state agencies (for example the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the Department of Environmental Protection and the state park system), federal agencies (the Census Bureau, NOAA and the National Weather Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) and school districts.

2. Primary institutions. Special districts, utilities, museums, universities and the organizations that run a place or program.

3. Established local and regional journalism, used for events, dates and context that official records do not publish.

4. Scholarly and archival sources, such as state archives and historical collections, for history.

Wikipedia and its mirrors, statistics aggregators that repackage other data (city-ranking and "best places" sites), and promotional pages written to sell a property, a business or a service are not used as sources. When an aggregator shows a number, the original government table is cited instead. Older articles that still cite one of these are being replaced as they are rewritten.

Each article ends with a numbered Sources list of the pages it relies on, and facts in the text link to the source that states them. Time-bound facts (fees, officials, schedules, populations) carry a date, and government pages state when the facts were last checked on the official website.

Official websites change without notice, and fees, schedules and officials change between updates. For anything with legal or financial weight (permits, taxes, evacuation orders, fishing regulations), the linked official source is the authority. How articles are researched and checked is described on the methodology page.

Corrections go to [email protected]. Please name the page and, where possible, the official source that shows the current fact.