Old SymbolsWhere every symbol began

Rory Hansen

Editor, Old Symbols

Rory Hansen researches, edits and approves the pages on oldsymbols.com and on its companion site, whatdoesthissymbolmean.com. Rory Hansen also runs both sites.

Of the 830 pages live on oldsymbols.com now, Rory Hansen was the last to review 830 pages. The name and date at the foot of each page say who reviewed it and when.

What approval means

Nothing appears on the site until an editor has read the page against its sources and marked it reviewed. The editing tool won’t allow that step while a page has fewer than two sources with a recorded passage, a drawing without a text description, or a link to a page that doesn’t exist. Religious and cultural pages also need a separate cultural check, and a symbol system publishes only after its hate-symbol review is recorded.

A change to a live page’s text waits, with the old text still showing, until it is approved the same way. Each approval moves the “Last reviewed” date on the page. How we research describes the whole process.