Elite Dangerous Field Manual:Reviewing an Article
How to review an article and move it through EDFM's verification pipeline.
The pipeline
{{Article status}}'s status field moves roughly: Draft (incomplete) → Needs review (drafted, not yet checked) → Partially verified (some claims checked) → Verified (checked directly against current Live gameplay by a named reviewer). Historical, Legacy only, and Upcoming sit outside that line — they describe what kind of content the article is, not a checking stage. See Elite Dangerous Field Manual:Verification Policy for the full definitions, including the distinction between status "Legacy only" and mode "Legacy."
Where to find work
Elite Dangerous Field Manual:Pages Needing Review is the working queue. Category:Pages Needing Review, Category:Draft Articles, and Category:Partially Verified Articles are populated automatically by {{Article status}}, so they always reflect the current real state rather than a hand-maintained list.
What a review actually checks
Per Elite Dangerous Field Manual:Verification Policy, a reviewer records seven required fields plus two optional ones on {{Article status}}:
- status, mode, version — the headline: what state is this in, and what does it apply to.
- reviewed, reviewer — when, and by/how.
- source_quality — see Elite Dangerous Field Manual:Source Quality Guide for the tier system.
- uncertainty — anything still genuinely unclear, stated plainly rather than glossed over.
- legacy_differences, recent_changes (optional) — fill in only when relevant.
Only move an article to Verified once you've actually checked its claims directly — against the live game where practical, not just against another wiki or a forum post. Moving something to Verified because content was added, rather than because it was checked, defeats the entire point of the status field.
Isolating uncertainty
If most of an article is solid but one section is shaky, don't let that drag the whole page's status down (or up) dishonestly — use {{Unverified claim}}/{{Estimated information}} inline on just the shaky part, and consider Partially verified with the uncertainty field naming exactly what's still open.