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Where the data comes from

folkroom takes material only from sources whose terms allow it, records the licence and author of every item, and shows that record beside the item itself. This page is the full account: each source, what we take from it, why, and how it is used without violating anyone’s rights.

The rules, before the sources

  • Never invent

    No fact and no citation is ever fabricated. Where evidence is thin, the page says so — a low-confidence marker instead of a confident guess.

  • A human approves everything

    No automated import publishes directly. Machine-proposed changes enter the same review queue as any edit, and a person decides.

  • Attribution, always

    Every image and record carries its licence, its author and a link to its source — rendered visibly, not buried in markup. For CC BY-SA material this is a legal obligation; we treat it as one for everything.

  • One origin counts once

    Twenty websites republishing one archive's statement are one source, not twenty. Confidence is scored on distinct origins, weighted by tier: accessioned and government records above general web.

  • Images must identify their subject

    A photograph appears on a tradition's page only when its source archive identifies that tradition in the frame. A beautiful but unidentified image is not evidence — the woven placeholder is more honest.

In use today

Wikimedia Commons

commons.wikimedia.org

Photographs that depict a named tradition

What we take
Images whose own description identifies the subject, with the file's licence, author, description and source page.
Why
An encyclopedia of living traditions needs photographs of the actual tradition, identified by the archive that holds them — not stock imagery guessed at by a search engine.
How it is used
A photo appears on an entity page only when the file's own page names that tradition. The photographer's credit and the licence are rendered visibly on the image, linking back to the source file. Files whose licence is not on our allowlist, or whose description does not identify the subject, are not used — the page shows a woven placeholder instead.
Licence
CC0, public domain, CC BY, CC BY-SA — checked per file against an allowlist
The record we keep
Per image: licence name, author, source URL, the description we relied on, and the thumbnail URLs Commons issued. Requests to Commons carry our identifying User-Agent, run one at a time, and are cached so nothing is fetched twice.

Pexels

pexels.com

Atmosphere only — never a named tradition

What we take
Background and mood imagery: textures, generic scenes, the search hero's backdrop.
Why
Some surfaces want a photographic mood. A stock library can provide that honestly — what it cannot provide is a verified photograph of a specific tradition, so it is never asked to.
How it is used
Pexels images appear only as blurred, dimmed backdrops, and the code that fetches them is typed so their output can never be attached to an entity as a depiction. The photographer's name renders as a visible, linked credit.
Licence
Pexels License, with photographer credit and link-back per their API guidelines
The record we keep
Per image: photographer, photographer's Pexels page, source URL, licence. Responses are cached for a day rather than re-fetched.

Folk pattern textures

drawn in-house

The designed empty state

What we take
Nothing. Kolam lattices, Warli grounds and woven plates are drawn by the site's own code.
Why
Where no correctly identified, rights-cleared photograph exists — which is common and expected — the page should look intentional rather than broken, without faking a photograph.
How it is used
Abstract pattern only. Never a depiction of a performer, a practice or an artwork; no AI-generated imagery of real traditions, ever.
Licence
Our own work — procedural drawings, no third-party rights involved
The record we keep
None needed — there is no upstream.

Contributors

the people who edit folkroom

The words on every page, and their citations

What we take
Edits, corrections, first-hand accounts, and photographs contributors have the right to share.
Why
This is a wiki. The archive is written by people who know the traditions, reviewed before it is published.
How it is used
Nothing publishes without human approval. Every revision records who wrote it and why; every claim carries its citations; the full history of every page is public and permanent.
Licence
Contributed under the site's terms; every claim must cite a source
The record we keep
Per revision: author, timestamp, edit summary, and the sources cited. The revision history is append-only — it cannot be rewritten, by us or anyone.

Adopted next — free and open

These open archives are being wired in under the same rules. They are listed here for honesty about direction; nothing from them appears on the site yet, and when it does, each will get a full card above.

  • WikidataCC0, no key requiredGlobal backbone for linking traditions to UNESCO listings, GI tags and places.
  • UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage listsofficial registerThe definitive record of inscribed living traditions, synced on its yearly cycle.
  • Library of Congressopen APICatalogue records and out-of-copyright ethnographic material.
  • The Met Museum Open AccessCC0 metadataAccessioned object records for instruments, textiles and artworks.
  • OpenStreetMap NominatimODbL, used per its usage policyWorldwide place resolution, one request at a time, cached permanently.
  • Internet Archive & Open Librarypublic domain textsOut-of-copyright ethnographic books and journals, as citable sources.

Why links, not screenshots

We do not reproduce screenshots of other websites as proof of where something came from — a screenshot of someone’s page is itself a copy of that page. The record we keep instead is the one that holds up: the source’s own URL, the licence it declared, the author it named, and the date we retrieved it, stored with every item and rendered beside it. Changes made by our own systems are written to a permanent, append-only audit log before they appear on any page.

Corrections and rights

If something here is wrong about your tradition, your work, or your rights — an image that should not be on a page, a credit that is missing or incorrect, a licence we have misread — write to rights@folkroom.in and it will be reviewed by a person. Removal requests for images are honoured while the review happens, not after it.