Process and analysis
What is Source reliability?
How trustworthy a source has proven over time, judged separately from whether a particular piece of information is credible.
Source reliability is an assessment of how trustworthy a source is, based on its track record, access and motives. It is judged separately from the credibility of any single claim, because reliable sources can be wrong and unreliable sources can be right.
In the Admiralty Code, reliability is the letter grade. Recording it for every source, including vendors, feeds and forums, lets readers weigh information quickly and helps the team notice when a source's quality changes.