Every live figure carries an as-of date and a last-reviewed date. Warconomy classifies it as current, aging, or stale by comparing its age to the cadence of its source — monthly data ages faster than annual data. Freshness is a re-check signal, not a correctness claim: a stale figure is one due for re-verification, not one known to be wrong.
- Three statuses: current, aging, stale.
- Thresholds are cadence-aware (monthly vs annual vs unknown).
- A re-check signal, not a correctness claim. Live breakdown at /freshness.
Three layers: official data, current signals, and scenarios
Warconomy deliberately keeps three kinds of information separate and labelled, so accurate data that simply lags never reads as "stale" and nothing current is ever overstated.
- Historical official data — annual macro figures (World Bank) and monthly commodity prices (FAO, World Bank). These are authoritative but lag: macro data is often a year or more behind because statistical offices need time to compile and revise it; monthly commodity data is usually one to two months behind. A page marked "Annual official data" or "Monthly data · through …" is current for that release, not out of date.
- Current signals — the watchlist: what to watch and which authoritative source to watch it on. It is reviewed, not live, and asserts no current number. It exists precisely because official data lags.
- Educational scenarios — the Scenario Lab: adjustable what-ifs over source-linked baselines, always labelled scenario, not a forecast.
Two more labels you will see: citation-only means Warconomy links to a source (e.g. USGS mineral production) but publishes none of its figures without a reviewed source packet; detect-only means a noisy feed is used to notice activity, never as a factual claim. This is why Warconomy never auto-publishes casualty, outage, export or price numbers from feeds — those belong to the cited specialist sources. When you see an "updated as of"or freshness badge, read it as "this is the latest official release we have checked", and follow the current-signals links for what is changing now. The maintainer view of every surface's currentness lives at /operator/freshness.
Statuses
current: Within the source's expected update window — no re-check due.
aging: Past the typical window but not yet overdue — a re-check is recommended soon.
stale: A re-check is overdue relative to the source's cadence. Not a claim the value is wrong, only that it should be re-verified.
Cadence-aware thresholds
| Cadence | Aging after (days) | Stale after (days) |
|---|---|---|
| monthly | 45 | 90 |
| annual | 547 | 913 |
| unknown | 90 | 180 |
Related
Live freshness: /freshness · data coverage: /data-coverage · caveats: /caveats.