OPERATING PROCEDURES
Methodology
How we decide what's true, what's disputed, and what stays out.
The subject is a living person
This site covers Elon Musk, who is alive. That imposes the strictest standard:
- Neutral tone, always. No partisan framing, no endorsement, no attack. Actions are described with dates; motives are left to the reader.
- Facts over narratives. We state what is documented and flag what is disputed.
- Privacy boundaries. Family and personal details are limited to the public record. Speculation about private matters is excluded.
Sourcing hierarchy
- Primary sources first: company filings (SEC), NASA announcements, court records, Musk’s own posts and published interviews, company blogs and presentations.
- Major reporting second: the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Reuters, the Financial Times, and similar — used for facts, cited where load-bearing.
- Books third: Ashlee Vance’s Elon Musk (2015) and Walter Isaacson’s Elon Musk (2023) are used as background, not as sole sources for contested claims.
Quotations
- Verbatim and cited. Every quote on Sayings carries its source.
- “Standard reported phrasing” means a line is widely and consistently reported with minor wording variations; the flag says exactly that.
- Misattributed section. Lines that circulate with his name but have no documented source go in the flagged section with “Unverified; do not attribute.”
Uncertainty policy
- Disputed claims are presented with the competing accounts and labeled as disputed. This site does not adjudicate family disputes, pending litigation, or contested intent.
- Moving figures (net worth, valuations, subscriber counts) are flagged as of their reporting date or omitted where no current verified figure is available.
- Dates follow the most-documented account; where accounts conflict, the conflict is noted.
Images
- Real photographs for all biographical and historical content — Wikimedia Commons, public domain or Creative Commons licensed. Every image is recorded in
the image credits on this pagewith its source, license, and attribution, and the caption on the page carries the credit. - Never generated fakes. No AI-generated image on this site depicts a real person as if photographed. Generated art is used only for: (a) the Vizlings character dramatization, clearly labeled “AI-generated dramatization art — not a historical depiction”; (b) abstract or conceptual illustration; (c) the social pack, every image labeled AI-generated.
Corrections
If you spot an error, the fix policy is: verify against a primary source, correct the page, and note the correction. A reference site is only as good as its last correction.
Source notes
This page is the site’s own policy document. The bibliography it governs lives on sources. Image provenance lives in the image credits on this page.