How information here is checked
Every dive site and every dive shop on this site carries a grade and, once somebody has set one, the day it was set. This page says what each grade means and how it is earned, because a badge nobody can look up is decoration.
| Grade | What it means | How it is earned |
|---|---|---|
| Verified | Someone here checked the record against a source outside this site. | Set by an administrator, who is recorded with the date. |
| Community verified | Divers who have been there agree on what the record says. | Two or more divers independently gave the same answer about the same site. |
| User reported | One diver said so, and nobody has confirmed it yet. | The starting grade for a dive site somebody added to the map. |
| Unverified | Nobody has checked this yet. | The starting grade for a dive shop that registered. |
| Rejected | Checked and not accepted. | An administrator reviewed it and refused. It is not a waiting room, and the page says so rather than borrowing the wording of one. |
What a grade decides
A dive site that is unverified or refused is not on this site at all — not in a listing, not in search, not at its own address. The three grades above it are all published.
A dive shop is listed from the moment it registers, so a diver looking for it can find it. What a grade decides for a shop is whether search engines are told about it, and whether it may put tours in front of divers. Both need a check.
The date beside the grade
A grade with no date is a claim about a moment nobody can name: “Verified” reads the same whether it was checked last week or years ago. So the day is shown next to the badge wherever the badge appears. A record with no date beside it has not been graded by anybody yet.
Grades do not expire on their own today. Nothing here re-checks a record after a set time, and a page that implied otherwise would be making a promise this site does not keep.
What a grade is not
- It is not a safety endorsement. Conditions change by the hour and no grade on this site is a judgement about whether a dive is safe to do today.
- It is not a quality rating. Verified means the details are what the shop says they are, not that the shop is good.
- It cannot be bought. No payment, placement or partnership changes a grade or a position in search results.
Who decides
Administrators grant and refuse grades, and every decision is recorded with who made it and why. The record of who is kept for review and is never shown on a public page: “verified” is a statement by this site, not by a named person.
The dive sites this site opened with are the other half of that answer. Their grade came from the person who researched and wrote them, on the day named beside the badge — one curator’s work, not 116 separate reviews. The record of who decided and why covers what administrators do here, in the product, from that day on.