How we work: sources, checks and artificial intelligence

What is the main rule?

No fact without a source. Numbers, dates, opening hours, prices, altitudes, distances, names of operators and historical facts are written only if a reliable source confirms them on the day we check. If there is no confirmation, the fact is left out: one sentence fewer is better than a wrong one.

Our sources, in order of preference:

1. official websites: town councils, the Madonie Park Authority, the Sicilian Region, event organisers, museums, the Italian Alpine Club (CAI);
2. encyclopaedias and scientific publications;
3. local newspapers and news sites.

Event aggregators and search engine summaries only tell us that something exists. On their own they are never enough for a date: in our checks we have found several of them with the wrong days.

Which sources do we use, and under which licence?

Each type of information has its main source. The table shows where it comes from and on what terms we use it.

Source	What we take	Terms of use
Town council and Madonie Park Authority websites	dates of feasts and events, opening hours, notices	cited with a link to the page
Organisers, Pro Loco associations, parishes, local news	event programmes	cited with a link to the page
OpenStreetMap	hotels and restaurants (name, type, contacts, opening hours), map points, road distances, trail distance and time	ODbL, © OpenStreetMap contributors
Open-Meteo	weather forecasts and 1991-2020 climate averages	CC BY 4.0
Wikimedia Commons	photos	licence of each photo (CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC0, public domain), with the author under every image
sentierisiciliani.it	trail tracks and technical details	link to their page: we do not republish their data
OpenTopoMap	base map of the interactive map and of the maps on individual pages	CC BY-SA
CCISS Viaggiare informati, ANAS, town councils	closure and roadworks notices on the roads page	cited with name, link and date of the check

The photos are real photos. We do not use AI-generated images: where no freely licensed photo exists, we use a simple illustration.

How do we check a fact?

• We open the source on the same day and store the check date with the fact. Events have a source and a date for every edition; hotels and restaurants have the date of the last check.
• We make sure the day of the week matches the year. Posters and articles recycled from the year before are the most common mistake.
• An event without an official source does not go into the calendar. A cancelled or postponed one stays, marked as such.
• In the text, links point to the primary source. The full list of sources is at the bottom of the page.

How often do we update?

The work follows a fixed schedule. Every page shows the date of its last update, which changes only when a fact changes.

When	What
Every day	a new article in the magazine, translated into four languages; weather forecasts on the pages; road notices checked; translations that fell behind
Every Monday	events of the next eight weeks rechecked against official sources; hotel and restaurant listings rebuilt from OpenStreetMap; missing photos; link and page speed checks
When you open a page	your browser asks Open-Meteo for the latest forecast

How do we use artificial intelligence?

Much of the daily work is done by an artificial intelligence assistant, Claude by Anthropic, in automated sessions that start every morning and every Monday. It looks for sources, reads them, writes drafts, prepares translations and runs the checks.

It works within rules written by the editorial team: no fact without a source opened on the same day, links to the primary source, no aggregators when an official source exists. Before each publication, automated checks run on data structure, internal links and on whether translations match the Italian text. The team sets the rules and the topics, reads the weekly check reports and fixes whatever doesn’t add up.

There are limits. A language model can misread a page or trust the wrong source, and automated checks don’t catch everything. That is why every fact carries its source, so you can check it, and every report we receive is verified against the source before we change the page.

The English, Spanish, French and German versions are translated by artificial intelligence from the Italian text, with the same data and the same sources.

Found a mistake?

Write to info@lemadonie.it with the page address, what is wrong and a link to the correct source. All the details are on Report an event or an error.