How the 518 Sports tab is made

4 sources feed this tab, 4 of them answering at the last check. All of them are public feeds the publishers offer themselves.

Sources

• Capital Region colleges: a Google News search for (Siena OR UAlbany OR "Great Danes" OR RPI OR "Union College") (basketball OR hockey OR football OR lacrosse OR soccer OR baseball) when:3d
• Capital Region teams: a Google News search for ("Tri-City ValleyCats" OR "Albany FireWolves" OR "Adirondack Thunder" OR "Albany Patroons") when:3d
• Saratoga racing: a Google News search for ("Saratoga Race Course" OR "Travers Stakes" OR NYRA OR "Saratoga Casino" OR "Saratoga harness") when:3d
• Section II high schools: a Google News search for "Section II" (football OR basketball OR soccer OR volleyball OR hockey OR lacrosse OR baseball OR softball OR "cross country" OR wrestling) when:3d

Rules this tab follows

• Every headline links to the publisher. The page shows the headline, a line or two from the publisher's own feed and a small picture when the feed has one. Nothing else is copied.
• The feeds are checked every hour, on the hour. A story drops off 48 hours after it was published.
• Sources are center or left leaning and free to read. Press release wires, sports sites and look-alike towns (the other Albanys and Troys) are blocked.
• No sports, no obituaries, no murders, arrests or crime reports, and nothing about sexual crimes, on any tab.
• 518 Sports comes from four Google News searches (the local colleges, the ValleyCats, FireWolves, Thunder and Patroons, Section II high schools, and Saratoga racing) plus any story on the national sports feeds whose headline names a local team, school or track. A headline has to name one of those to get in, because the searches bring back strays. The same sport buttons as the Sports tab apply, and the same betting and listings filter.
• The scores strip at the top comes from ESPN's public scoreboard feed, refreshed every 15 minutes: the New York teams (Bills, Giants, Jets, Knicks, Nets, Yankees, Mets, Rangers, Islanders, Sabres, Liberty) and the local colleges (Siena, UAlbany, RPI, Union). High school scores are not on it; there is no reliable public source for Section II results.
• When several outlets carry the same story it shows once, with the others listed under "Also". A story already on an earlier tab (World first, then USA, then 518 News, then the extra tabs) does not repeat on a later one.
• Newest first, with a lift for stories many outlets cover. No single source may take more than 4 spots in a row (2 for magazines and one-person newsletters), so one outlet never crowds the top.
• Stories about Donald Trump are held to about 1 in 10 unless you change that in Settings.
• The admin can remove a story, or add one by hand; a hand-added story sits at the top of its tab for 48 hours. Nothing here is written or rewritten by the site.

What you can change

• How many stories you see (30, 50 or up to 100), how many Trump stories, whether paywalled papers show, pictures on or off, and words that hide a story: all in Settings.
• Text size, compact mode, light or dark, and the order of the boxes on the front page, also in Settings.
• 🔖 Read later under any story keeps it on your own page until you delete it.
• Add 518 Sports to your tab bar in Settings so it is one tap away.
• An account is optional and asks only for a name and a password; it carries your settings, your Read later list and your thumbs up to every device.

The whole picture is on How we get this data. Every source on the site is listed on About and sources.