About the project
How we check the facts on Vibe South of France
We take facts from organisations' own websites and from official registers. Directory entries then get a second check whose aim is to prove the entry wrong, and they show the date they were checked. Spotted a mistake? Tell us, and we'll compare it with the source and correct it.
The «Vibe South of France» site is run by volunteers from the community, and the worst thing we could do is send you to an address where nothing has been for years. So here, briefly and plainly: where our facts come from, how we check them, what we don’t publish, and what happens when you find a mistake. If something doesn’t match what you see on the ground, write to the «Vibe South of France» community chat on Telegram or email contact@vibe-sud-france.com.
Where our facts come from
We look for addresses, timetables and statuses at the original source, not in retellings.
- Organisations’ own websites. For parishes and dioceses, schools, shops and associations we read the timetable and address on their own pages.
- Official registers. SIRENE shows whether a business is active. RNA and the associations’ official gazette, JOAFE, show whether an association exists and hasn’t been dissolved. For moving and paperwork we use the websites of the préfectures, OFII, CPAM and CAF.
- OpenStreetMap. As an independent confirmation of an address, but never as the only source.
- Our chat and our meetups. The chat suggests what is worth checking, but we don’t take an address, hours or a price from the chat into the directory. Figures about our own meetups, such as how many people came, come from our own records of each event.
How we check directory entries
Every entry for a church, school or association gets a status based on the number and quality of its sources.
| Status | What it means | What happens to the entry on the site |
|---|---|---|
| Confirmed | At least two independent sources, one of them primary (the organisation’s own website or an official register), and a sign of life from 2025-2026: a timetable, an announcement or a register entry | Goes on the site |
| Partly confirmed | One primary source, or every sign of life is older than 2025 | Goes on the site; associations only if they have their own website |
| Not confirmed | Only secondary sources: forums, aggregators, old articles | Stays off the site |
| Closed | There is evidence of closure, dissolution or relocation | We don’t show it as active |
If an association has filed the same declaration with two registers, they count as one source, not two. That is why, on re-checking, we downgraded several entries from “confirmed” to “partly confirmed”.
Then comes a second, separate check: the original sources are opened again to find where the entry is wrong - name, address, timetable, website and status. We count as a mistake a wrong address, a timetable that isn’t on the organisation’s page, and a status higher than the sources support. Every mistake found is confirmed by one more, independent check. Only entries that have passed this check reach the directory on the site.
Shops get the same treatment: we check the address and hours against the SIRENE register, OpenStreetMap and the shop’s own page. We give hours only if we have checked them.
What that looks like in numbers:
- Directory for 52 cities of the South. We re-checked 134 entries and found mistakes in 40 of them. Only corrected and confirmed entries went onto the site.
- An example. The Russian school “Gramota” in Toulouse was listed by us as active. A check against the registers found a dissolution notice in the JOAFE dated 10 February 2026, and the site now says that we don’t know of a confirmed children’s school in Toulouse.
- Directory for the whole of France. In the first round we checked 446 items and found mistakes in 23 (5.2%). In five of them the fact itself was wrong: an address, “active” or the language of services. The rest were names and usernames in source links and missing flags on sensitive topics. Everything has been corrected. This material is not on the site yet; we’re checking it in advance.
What we don’t publish
- People’s names. We don’t name priests, teachers or association heads: we write about the organisation, not the person. The rare exceptions, such as the host of our “Mafia” evenings, are decided by the project owner.
- Personal phone numbers and emails. We give phone numbers and emails only for state bodies and our partners; for other organisations it is the address and hours.
- Home addresses. If an association’s registered address is a private home, we name only the commune. Private venues, whether a villa or a dacha, are likewise given by commune only.
- A personal Instagram. The site carries only the project’s official account.
- Photos without consent. Pages about meetups show only pictures that the people in them agreed to have published.
This is other people’s private life, and nobody should have to learn about themselves from a directory. Before pages go live they pass an automatic check for personal data: it won’t let through a mobile number that isn’t on the list of organisations’ official numbers.
Where you’ll see the date, and how often we update
Under the heading of pages with facts (city guides, moving, the directory, shops, places, the blog) there is an “Updated” line with a date. In the lists and tables of the directory and the shops there is a “Checked” note with the date the entries were last checked. The date in that line, in the page’s markup for search engines and in the sitemap is one and the same. The home page and the meetup pages have no “Updated” line: for a meetup the date that matters is the day of the meetup itself.
We don’t refresh a date for show; it changes when the facts have changed. If we fix a typo, the date stays as it was.
We have no update schedule: we’re volunteers. We edit a page when a check has found a discrepancy or when you’ve written to us about a mistake. Service times, shop hours and course timetables change, so use our date to judge how fresh an entry is and, when in doubt, ask in our chat. We don’t show the source links for each directory entry on the page; only the date of the check is visible.
Found a mistake: what to do and what we’ll do
Next to the update date and in the footer of every page there is a “Report a mistake” link. It opens an email to contact@vibe-sud-france.com with the subject line and the page address already filled in. In the body of the email we ask you to say what is wrong, what it should say and how you know. If Telegram is easier, write in the «Vibe South of France» community chat.
Then we compare your message with the original source. If it’s confirmed, we correct the page and update the date. If it isn’t confirmed, or there is no source, we leave things as they are: we change a directory entry only after checking. We don’t promise deadlines, because the site is run by volunteers.
A mistake on the site lives longer than you might think: search engines don’t revisit a page every day and keep showing its earlier version for a while. The sooner you tell us, the sooner the corrected text reaches search results.
How the texts are prepared
Directory entries are gathered from original sources and then checked again in a separate second check: only what passes both goes into the directory. The other pages, including the sections on documents, are compared with original sources in turn, and a corrected page gets a new date. They do not yet have a second check like the directory does. The project team decides what is published.
What to read next
- The insider’s directory: Churches and Russian schools, with the check date for every entry.
- Moving and paperwork: step-by-step guides based on the websites of the préfectures, OFII, CPAM and CAF.
- About the project: who runs the site and the chat.