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Methodology

How matching works

PaliAnswers never generates the text you read. Every visible answer is written and approved by PaliAnswers's editorial team ahead of time and stored verbatim in the tool's corpus; searching only decides which pre-written answer to show you, never what the answer should say.

A search runs through up to four stages, in order, stopping as soon as one produces a confident answer:

  1. Keyword and phrase matching against the exact wording of each myth's claim and its known variations.
  2. Semantic matching — understanding what you meant even if you phrased it differently from how the myth is written in the library.
  3. When retrieval is ambiguous, a language model re-ranks the closest candidates purely to decide which already-written myth you most likely meant — it is never shown your search in order to write new text, only to route you to the right existing one.
  4. If nothing in the library covers your search, a final check distinguishes a general knowledge question (sent to a "we don't have this yet" state) from a genuine gap in the corpus (logged so the editorial team can see what's missing).

Who writes the answers

Every claim, answer, and citation in the corpus is authored and reviewed by PaliAnswers's editorial team before it ever becomes searchable. Sources are cited inline with each answer — see the Sources page for how citations are chosen and presented.

Corrections

If you believe an answer is inaccurate, outdated, or missing an important source, please contact PIPD through Communicating Palestine (communicatingpalestine.org). Corrections go through the same editorial review as new content before publishing.

Privacy

PaliAnswers does not ask you to create an account. Anonymous, rotating session identifiers are used only to understand usage patterns (which searches find an answer, which don't) and are not tied to any personal identity. Raw search text is retained for 90 days and then removed, keeping only anonymous counts.

Optional measurement by Google Tag Manager is off unless you accept it. Until you do, nothing is requested from Google and no cookies are set. If you accept, PIPD can see how the tool is used overall — pages viewed, searches run, and whether a search found an answer — and Google may set cookies and receive your IP address and browser details. We do not build advertising profiles and we do not sell or share your data. You can change your choice at any time from the "Cookie choice" link in the footer, and the tool works normally either way. The Privacy page, also linked in the footer, sets all of this out in full.

This page currently describes the tool's general approach. Some of the technical detail above is being updated as PaliAnswers moves to new infrastructure — the editorial and privacy commitments described here are unaffected by that move.