Methodology
How this wiki was made, what its labels mean, and where it can be wrong.
Sources
- Videos: all 2,523 uploads of the vlogbrothers channel, 2007–2026 (237 hours).
- Transcripts: every video was transcribed with Whisper large-v3. 1,392 videos (55 %) also have human captions uploaded with the video; where both exist, wording, names and speakers follow the captions. The other 1,131 were read from the Whisper transcript alone, so names and rare words there are less reliable.
- Also read: each video's description and the brothers' own comments under it. Statements taken from them are marked video description or creator comment instead of a timestamp, since they were not said in the video.
How each video was read
- An analyst model reads the transcripts and writes the video's record: statements (claims, opinions, life events, announcements), mentions of people and things, jokes, and events on long-running threads.
- A second model audits that record against the transcripts and fixes what a reader would see: invented or distorted content, wrong speaker, jokes read literally, wrong certainty, missed key points and missed thread events.
- Code checks every quote and evidence span is copied verbatim from a source and anchors it to its timestamp; records that fail are fixed before they are published.
- A registrar merges new people, things and threads into one registry, so the same thing has one page across years.
Nothing is added from outside knowledge: what a page says is what the videos, descriptions and comments say.
Threads and their statuses
A thread follows one thing across videos. Its status is a state, not the last thing that happened:
| kind | status |
|---|---|
| promise | kept, kept late, dropped, changed; the project it belongs to reported its result; standing commitment (a lasting one, kept as long as it is not dropped); open (no report in 2007–2026); open (updates through YYYY, not reported done); postponed (YYYY); not reported kept when it was put off and nothing later says it was done; said in jest (not tracked) when it was only ever made as a joke |
| ask | reported back (a result, thanks or close in a later video); the project it belongs to reported its result; asked again year after year (an annual ask); asked again in N years (YYYY–YYYY) (asked in several years with gaps between); asked in YYYY; no response reported (an ask of an earlier year nobody reported on); reminder only or the ask itself is not in the videos read here when only the report is in the videos; promotion, announcement, invitation, joke or advice (not a request) when nothing is asked of anyone |
| prediction | came true, partly came true, proved wrong, or unresolved (no horizon named); due YYYY; outcome not yet known when its named year has not come; said in jest (not tracked) when it was only ever said as a joke; its date passed (YYYY); no outcome reported when the prediction named its own year and that year is over |
| punishment | performed, waived, disputed; otherwise the stage it reached with no report it was done (proposed; set, no report it was done; accepted, no report it was done; changed, no report it was done) |
| project history | proposed, running, completed, lapsed; completed, not continued when the work came out and a planned continuation stopped; past edition for one year's edition or chapter ("Pizzamas 2013 edition") once that year is over; last documented in YYYY when for over two years no new stage is recorded and the project itself is not a main topic of any video (a look back does not count as news); known from looking back when the videos only ever look back on it |
| running joke | running joke (last seen YYYY), one-off joke (one video so far), short bit (two videos within a month), or retired |
| story | told N× (and the year of the last update, or stopped by YYYY (as told) when the speaker says the activity ended); followed over N videos when it was told once and then followed as it went on; updates only when only later news of it is in the videos |
The events on a thread are named:
| kind | events |
|---|---|
| ask | asked, reminder, result reported, thanks, closed |
| running joke | first use, callback, variation, retired, looked back on |
| prediction | predicted, repeated, recalled, came true, partly came true, proved wrong |
| promise | promised, progress update, kept, dropped, changed, kept late, postponed, recalled |
| punishment | proposed, set, accepted, changed, performed, disputed, waived, looked back on |
| project history | proposed, announced, launched, milestone, setback, rule change, paused, restarted, outcome, looked back |
| story | told, retold, update, mentioned, stopped |
Threads seen in only one video are listed on one page per kind: asks, stories, project moments, jokes.
Dates
Dates are upload dates, which set the order. Where the speaker gives a different recording date in the video, it is added as "said on YYYY-MM-DD, implied" (derived from the date said in the video).
Other measures
- Words matter (high / medium / low): how central the ideas are to a video; see Essential videos.
- Fact claims: figures are shown as said, with what they measure and where they come from; nothing is fact-checked against outside sources; see the Fact & evidence ledger.
- Humor share (none / minor / significant / dominant): how much of a video is comedy; see Humor.
Limits
- Machine reading makes mistakes; the audit catches many, not all. The 2011 videos are a lower-confidence wave: they did not pass the quality gate and are marked on their pages.
- Coverage ends in 2026: an "open" promise or ask may be resolved in a later video.
- Videos without human captions can carry misheard names or words.