Skip to content

Quality tiers

Every cultivar page carries a tier that signals how much you should trust it. Here's what each tier means and how a page levels up.

Three quality tier badges side by side: Unverified, Partially Sourced, Authoritative
The three tier badges — same layout, different visual weight.

Why tiers exist

The plumeria world has tons of unsourced or contradictory data. The tier system is the wiki's way of being honest about what we know — and motivating contributors to push pages toward something authoritative.

A quick note on PSA

You'll see PSA mentioned throughout the wiki. PSA is the Plumeria Society of America, the organization that maintains the most widely recognized cultivar registry. A cultivar with a PSA number has been formally registered there, which counts as a strong primary source — it's usually enough on its own to anchor a page's structured data.

Tier 1 — Unverified

The starting point for almost every page. Imported from a single source (the Donnellan PDF, a community submission) without independent corroboration.

  • No references, or references from a single contributor.
  • Stub-level structured data.
  • Visual treatment is muted — a clear cue to readers that the page isn't yet trustworthy.

Example:a cultivar imported from a single legacy PDF with a name, an attributed hybridizer, and nothing else. No photos, no references, no structured fields filled in. It's on the wiki so people searching for the name find something, but readers should treat the data as a starting point, not a fact.

Tier 2 — Partially Sourced

The middle tier. To get here a page needs:

  • At least one reference attached.
  • At least one approved photo.
  • Some structured fields populated.

Visual treatment is normal — the page reads like trustworthy content but doesn't claim authority.

Example:a cultivar with a contributor-uploaded bloom photo, a description and growth habit filled in, and one reference to a reputable nursery's catalog page. Readers can verify the basics, but corroboration from a second independent contributor is what would push it to the top tier.

Tier 3 — Authoritative

The top tier. Authoritative pages have:

  • Multiple references from multiple contributors. Corroboration matters — one person's sources, even if extensive, aren't enough on their own.
  • Most structured fields populated.
  • At least one approved photo.
  • A documented hybridizer or origin.

Example:a PSA-registered cultivar with the PSA number, a verified-breeder profile linked from the Hybridizer field, multiple photos covering different sections, and references added by two or more contributors (the breeder's own site and a published horticultural article). This is the gold-standard a reader can rely on without second-guessing.

An Authoritative cultivar page with full data and several references
An Authoritative page — multiple sources, structured data, photos.

How a page levels up

Tiers update automatically whenever the underlying data changes — there's nothing to click. When you propose an edit that gets approved, your reference is attached, or your photo is published, the tier recomputes.

The badge on each page also displays a small upgrade hint— what specifically is missing to reach the next tier (e.g. "needs one more independent reference" or "needs a photo").

Filtering by tier

The catalog filters include a tier control. If you only want to see well-sourced data, set the filter to Authoritative or Partially Sourced. See Browse & search.

Helping a page level up
The fastest way to push a Tier 1 page to Tier 2 is to attach one reliable reference and a photo. Pushing Tier 2 to Tier 3 usually requires getting an independent contributor to corroborate with their own reference.