At One Place

How these pages are made

This site currently has about 36,060 pages. They are generated from a structured dataset rather than written one at a time, and this page explains exactly what that means — including where it makes the answers better and where it makes them worse.

Pages are generated from data, not written individually

Each subject is stored once as a set of typed facts — a weight, a decibel level, a lifespan, a price — and every page that needs one of those facts reads it from the same place. A single entry for "refrigerator" is what produces the weight page, the loudness page, the running-cost page and every comparison it appears in.

The advantage is consistency: correcting a figure once corrects it everywhere it appears. The risk is the obvious one — that generating pages cheaply tempts you into generating pages that should not exist. The rules below are what we use to avoid that.

Every figure carries a source

A fact cannot be stored without a reference to where it came from, and the build fails if one is missing. Sources are listed at the foot of every page that quotes them, and the full list with licences is on the sources page.

Where a figure is arithmetic rather than a measurement — a unit conversion, a ratio, a total — it is marked as calculated, and the inputs carry the real citations.

What "typical range" means

Many honest answers are ranges. A refrigerator does not have a weight; refrigerators weigh between roughly 80 and 140 kg depending on type. Publishing a single confident number in that situation is the most common way a reference site is wrong.

So where no single authority publishes a figure, we give the range compiled from manufacturer specifications, label it as a compiled range rather than a measurement, and say what the range covers. If you need a precise number for a specific model, use that model’s documentation, not this site.

Where these pages are weakest

  • Prices are indicative and in US dollars. They date faster than anything else here and should be treated as an order of magnitude, not a quote.
  • Decibel figures depend heavily on distance and room. Unless stated otherwise, they are measured at roughly one metre from the source.
  • Lifespans assume ordinary domestic use and maintenance. They are medians, not guarantees.
  • Comparison pages are descriptive, not predictive. Where a page compares two animals, it is comparing published measurements — it is not a forecast of anything.
  • Nothing here is medical, legal, financial or safety advice. Where a figure has safety implications, follow the authority we cite rather than us.

Corrections

If a figure is wrong, telling us fixes it everywhere it appears rather than on one page. Corrections that come with a source get applied fastest.