Feasibility check
Retrievability check: r/singularity, vanguard sub-series pilot
Retrievability check: r/singularity, vanguard sub-series pilot
Run 2026-10-02 under the accepted amendment
docs/amendments/2026-10-02-vanguard-stream.md (section 5).
Script: scripts/retrievability_check.py. Nothing was coded
and no post text was stored; the output files hold post IDs, times,
scores and status flags only.
Headline: two figures, always reported together
I ruled (2026-10-02) that video posts are coded from their title only, and asked (2026-10-03) that both figures be reported side by side:
- Fully recoverable: text posts with their body, links with title and address, and images that still load. 55% over the full pilot window (88 of 160); 57% over the first six quarters (68 of 120).
- Including video posts coded by title only:
90% over the full pilot window (144 of 160); 88% over
the first six quarters (106 of 120). Title-only rows carry
title_only: yesin the coding scheme, because coding from a title alone likely overstates unhedged claims (amendment sections 7 and 8).
| quarter | top posts | fully recoverable | video, coded by title only | recoverable incl. title-only | lost | unverified |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024Q4 | 20 | 11 (55%) | 6 | 17 (85%) | 2 | 1 |
| 2025Q1 | 20 | 14 (70%) | 3 | 17 (85%) | 2 | 1 |
| 2025Q2 | 20 | 9 (45%) | 10 | 19 (95%) | 1 | 0 |
| 2025Q3 | 20 | 12 (60%) | 7 | 19 (95%) | 0 | 1 |
| 2025Q4 | 20 | 11 (55%) | 3 | 14 (70%) | 4 | 2 |
| 2026Q1 | 20 | 11 (55%) | 9 | 20 (100%) | 0 | 0 |
| 2026Q2 | 20 | 8 (40%) | 11 | 19 (95%) | 0 | 1 |
| 2026Q3 | 20 | 12 (60%) | 7 | 19 (95%) | 0 | 1 |
| 2024Q4 to 2026Q1 (six quarters) | 120 | 68 (57%) | 38 | 106 (88%) | 9 | 5 |
| full pilot window, 2024Q4 to 2026Q3 | 160 | 88 (55%) | 56 | 144 (90%) | 9 | 7 |
Video's share of top posts, and what the title-only exclusion tracks (added 2026-10-03 at my request). Video's share of the top 20 per quarter is 30, 15, 50, 35, 15, 45, 55 and 35% (2024Q4 to 2026Q3); of the top 50, 38, 20, 50, 28, 32, 44, 54 and 24%. It does not rise steadily: it swings by quarter and falls again in 2026Q3. Comparing halves of the window, it edges up from 32.5% to 37.5% of the top 20 (34% to 38.5% of the top 50). Either way, how many rows are title-only depends on the format mix of each quarter, so the gap between the "with" and "without title-only" figures partly tracks changes in what kind of post gets voted up, not only a limit of title coding. Any trend in that gap should be read against this video-share series.
"Lost" = image file deleted from Reddit's image host (HTTP 404). "Unverified" = galleries, whose content needs reddit.com, which refused the lookup. These are the top 20 per quarter; image loading was checked only for the top 20, so no comparable top-50 figure exists. The headline written before the video ruling follows.
Headline (before the video ruling)
Of the 120 top posts (stream F's top 20 by recorded score per quarter, six complete quarters, 2024Q4 to 2026Q1):
| status | posts | share |
|---|---|---|
| Content recoverable for coding (3 text posts with their body; 61 images that still load; 4 links with title and address) | 68 | 57% |
| Known lost (image file deleted from Reddit's image host, HTTP 404) | 9 | 7.5% |
| Not verifiable with public tools today (38 videos, 5 galleries) | 43 | 36% |
So between 57% (confirmed) and 92.5% (if every unverified video and gallery still plays) of top posts can be coded from public sources; 7.5% are known to be lost.
The titles and links of all 120 are in the public archive, and every one carries a settled score, so listing and ranking can be reproduced exactly. What fails is the content: top posts in r/singularity are overwhelmingly images (70 of 120) and videos (38), and only 3 are text posts.
What was tested, against section 5 of the amendment
| requirement | result |
|---|---|
| Reach the versioned source | Yes: the Arctic Shift archive API,
subreddit=singularity, paged by post time, 100 posts per
request |
| List every post in the period | Yes, after a resumed run. First run (2026-10-02): 43,700 posts listed from 2024-10-01 before the archive replied "Timeout. Maybe slow down a bit" (HTTP 422) at request 438, reaching 2026-06-09. Under the overnight rule the run stopped there. Six complete quarters (2024Q4 to 2026Q1, 40,454 posts) were analysed; 2026Q2 was partial and 2026Q3 not listed. Resumed run (2026-10-03, with back-off on throttling; none was needed): 10,090 more posts in 70 requests, to 2026-09-30 23:56 UTC. Full window: 50,544 posts, no gap longer than 24 hours. 2026Q2: 4,361 posts; 2026Q3: 5,729 |
| Reproduce the ranking | Yes: every listed post's ID, time and recorded score is in
r-singularity-pilot-index.csv; the top-50 per quarter,
ranked by score then post time, is in
r-singularity-pilot-top-posts.csv |
| Retrieve the text needed to check the coding | Titles: 120 of 120. Content: see the headline |
| Score observation time | Unknown. The archive's capture-time field
(retrieved_on) equals the posting time for all top posts,
so it records the first capture, not when the settled score was taken.
Scores are clearly settled (top-20 minimums of 1,904 to 5,310 per
quarter), but their observation time can't be stated. Coverage class for
scores: unknown |
| Status on Reddit itself (removed, deleted, live) | Not checked. reddit.com refused the bulk lookup (HTTP 403); not retried |
Detail
Posts per quarter (listed): 2024Q4 9,039; 2025Q1 8,077; 2025Q2 6,428; 2025Q3 6,360; 2025Q4 5,195; 2026Q1 5,355.
Top-20 post types: image 70, video 38, gallery 5, link 4, text 3. Top-50 per quarter (300 posts): image 160, video 106, gallery 12, link 12, text 10. The image share is similar, so the result isn't an artefact of looking only at the very top.
Images that no longer load (HTTP 404): 1gw9wjo,
1gsa8dm, 1i85th6, 1ia8m4w,
1jqc0hw, 1pd9rue, 1oiyl0f,
1ojx1hr, 1ox8job.
These are top posts before eligibility screening. The rewarded series ranks eligible posts, so screening (claims about AI capability, timeline or consequence; image posts only with legible text) will drop some and pull in lower-ranked posts.
What this means for the design
- The rewarded series in r/singularity is mostly pictures and video. Under my ruling, image posts with legible text are coded; that requires the image, and about one in eight top images is already gone after one to two years. The loss will be larger for older periods.
- Video posts: settled. I ruled on 2026-10-02 that they are coded from the title only (see the revised headline). Previously: 38 of 120 top posts are videos. The amendment covered image posts but not videos; a ruling is needed (code from the title only, code from the video, or exclude), and whichever is chosen decides most of the 36% unverified band.
- Reddit's own status can't be checked by a public script (HTTP 403), so removal and deletion rates for top posts can't be reported from Reddit; only from what the archive and image host expose.
- The archive throttles a full listing. A reader can reproduce the listing only slowly, and probably only from Arctic Shift's monthly dump files rather than the API for longer spans. The amendment's own note ("use the monthly dumps instead" for large pulls, per the archive's guidance) points the same way.
- Score timing is unknown, so the rewarded series should be labelled "highest recorded-score posts among archived records", as the amendment already requires.
Not done
The Reddit status lookup (refused on 2026-10-02, skipped on
2026-10-03), and checks of video, gallery and linked-page availability.
Images in 2026Q2 and 2026Q3 were checked on 2026-10-03, those in earlier
quarters on 2026-10-02. Output for the last two quarters is in
r-singularity-pilot-index-2026q2-q3.csv and
r-singularity-pilot-top-posts-2026q2-q3.csv. Nothing else
was collected.
Rendered from docs/feasibility/vanguard-retrievability-2026-10.md at version a7bd17a.