Prix Omra is made by a short production line, described here without polish: a register of facts, an AI tool that drafts, and automated checks that stop whatever fails our rules.
Where do the figures come from?
From a register of facts kept by the publisher. Each entry holds an amount or a rule, the source where it was read, the date it was read, a confidence level and the date of its next scheduled check. A figure that is not in the register cannot appear on the site.
The current entries were gathered through desk research. A member of the team still has to re-confirm them one by one, which is why our pages say "Sources consulted on …" and never name a person as having checked them.
When a source reports a figure with a caveat ("according to the federation", "provisional amount"), the caveat is stored with the fact and the page has to repeat it in the same sentence.
Who writes the text?
An AI tool drafts the pages from the facts in the register, in English, French and Arabic. Each language is written separately for its own readers: we do not translate pages from one language into another. The byline line of every page says so.
Data pages, such as the official Hajj cost series, are built straight from the register, table by table.
What do the automated checks look for?
Before anything goes live, a program reads every page and blocks it if it finds:
- a sentence with a number or a rule and no fact from the register behind it, or a number that is not in that fact;
- a missing caveat that the source calls for ("according to…", "provisional");
- a fact that is out of date or not yet approved;
- an agency named without legal approval;
- promotional wording, false urgency or a promise;
- a reproduced religious text;
- a page too similar to another page in the network.
Articles that pass these checks are published without a human reading them first; the team reviews a weekly report of what went out. That has limits: an automated check confirms that a figure is sourced, not that the sentence around it is as accurate as it could be. All the more reason to tell us when something looks wrong.
How is a mistake corrected?
A reported mistake that turns out to be real is fixed on the page and logged with its date and the nature of the change. If the mistake came from a fact in the register, the fact itself is corrected, and every page that cites it changes at the same time.
To report a doubtful figure, use the contact page. Who publishes this site, and why, is explained on the publisher page.