What It Is
Forkarium is a relationship investigation service that starts from a single question and builds a case file. Ask a question, and information cards and evidence-backed links found in public sources are placed on a board. Users read, edit and add to that board to piece together the full picture of a case. It covers incidents, accidents, mysteries and allegations.
The Problem
Understanding a major incident or an old mystery means jumping between articles and documents and stitching together in your head who is tied to whom, and how. Wikis explain each entry well but do not show the relationships between entries at a glance. Community theories are fast, but it is hard to tell where fact ends and guesswork begins.
Forkarium lays the relationships out on one board and attaches a source to every card and link. Facts and guesses are kept apart, and open questions are recorded as open questions.
Who It Is For
- People who want the whole story of a case: people who want to organize an incident from the news or an old mystery from beginning to end
- People who read for evidence: people who would rather follow sourced facts than speculation
- People who add what they know: people who want to make a file more accurate by editing the wiki and commenting on cards and links
Core Flow
- Ask: describe the case you are curious about in a sentence. While you type, existing case files and wiki entries appear first.
- Read the board: follow photos, sources and relationship notes on the board of cards and links.
- Switch views: read the same file as a board, a file, a timeline, a flow or an investigation lanes view.
- Add and edit: edit the wiki, comment on cards and links, add information or rearrange it. You can also make a copy and continue your own way without touching the original.
- Watch and embed: watch a case file for new information, and embed the board on another site.
Key Features
- Case file board: information cards and evidence-backed links on a single sheet. Every link carries the public document that states that relationship.
- Several views: board, file, timeline, flow, update history, and an investigation lanes view that sorts rows by how many steps each card is from the center.
- A wiki edited together: anyone can read and edit entries for the people, organizations and places in a case.
- Comments and copies: comment on files, cards and links, and make a copy to test a different theory while the original stays intact.
- Featured case files: a few files finished by hand by the operator sit on the first screen and in the example questions, so newcomers first see what a complete board looks like.
- Embeds: the board, the lanes view and the investigation log can be placed on other sites.
- Case updates from the official account: the official account posts new cases that pass the case criteria and adds new information to existing files.
- Five languages: Korean, English, Japanese, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese.
Product Decisions
- Set the case criteria first: a case posted by the official account goes public only if it clears all five conditions: two independent reliable sources, real names only for public figures, victims kept unidentifiable, allegations attributed to whoever made them, and unresolved matters marked as unresolved. Failing any one means it is not posted.
- No entertainment or private lives: entertainment, sports, products and memes are left out of scope, so relationship research never turns into digging into private lives.
- Curiosity never beats facts: featured files are real cases people want answers to, but guesses are moved down into "open questions", and titles never go beyond the evidence with sensational wording.
- No columns for states that don't exist: the lanes view has no "investigating" or "solved" columns. Turning information the board does not hold into a column would make the page state something untrue.
- The investigating belongs to the user: reading sources, checking evidence, linking relationships and adding information sit at the center of the service. Automatically drafted content and translations are labeled as such.
- Only photos with a confirmed license: card photos are used only when the author and license are confirmed, with the credit shown next to the photo. Videos come only from official channels.
Revenue Model
- Free: reading case files, reading and editing the wiki, embedding boards and making copies are all free. Signed-in users can run up to 3 new investigations a day.
- Forkarium Plus: $5 a month or $50 a year. The daily investigation limit rises to 20, and you can watch case files.
Each investigation incurs an external search cost, so the paid line sits on the number of investigations. Only turning watching on requires Plus; turning it off works any time, even after a subscription ends.
Next Hypotheses
- Whether people who view a featured case file go on to start a new investigation with their own question.
- Whether people who use up their 3 daily investigations move to Plus or come back the next day.
- Whether user comments and wiki edits actually raise the accuracy of case files.