Whose assumption this is

A hundred and five phantom limits. The largest figure on this site, and the one with the weakest foundation.

Every one of the two hundred and six assumptions belongs to one person: the observer, at the door, before checking.

What the field is

A sentence written down on arrival at each place, before looking for a notice and before asking anybody: how long do I think I can stay here? Teams coordinating visits, notes and follow-up can check how the platform works today, then check whether the resulting evidence actually improves the field process.

Two hundred and six times, under one rule that was fixed before the walk and never relaxed — the sentence is written at the door or it is not written at all. A minute later it is unrecoverable, because nobody can honestly reconstruct what they expected before they knew. Additional practical or institutional guidance relevant to the survey can be found at KoboToolbox.

That rule is the only reason the field exists.

What it is not

Not a survey. Nobody else was asked anything. No person sitting in any of the two hundred and six places was approached about what they believed.

Not representative of anybody. One walker, with one set of habits, one amount of nerve, and a particular history of being in rooms. A person who had worked in hospitality would guess differently. So would somebody who had been asked to leave somewhere.

Not a measure of a city's atmosphere. It is a measure of one person's reading of twelve kinds of room, and the two are not the same.

Every page in this section is about what one person expected. That is stated on each of them, and it is the limitation that matters most.

Why it was kept

Because the alternative was to publish only half the record.

The limit field on its own is a solid, checkable count: a hundred and sixty-eight places say no limit, twenty-one have notices, seventeen answer when asked. That half would have made a short, defensible site about how little this city restricts anybody.

It would also have missed the thing the walk was actually for. The interesting question was never what places allow. It was the distance between what they allow and what is supposed about them, and measuring a distance needs both ends.

So the softer end was recorded, labelled soft, and kept.

What makes it better than an anecdote

Three things, and they are the whole defence.

It was recorded before the answer. The order was fixed and the field was written first. Nothing could be adjusted once the fact was known, including in the places where being wrong was embarrassing.

It was recorded everywhere. Two hundred and six places, with no discretion about when to write it down. The temptation in a record like this is to note the assumption when it turns out interesting and forget it when it does not, and a rule that applies to every entry is the only protection against that.

It is falsifiable in one obvious way. Ask other people. If three strangers in each place believe what this observer believed, the finding holds in a form worth something. If they do not, the finding reduces to a fact about one person, and the record says so in advance rather than being caught out later.

What would replace it

A short question to three people sitting in each place: how long do you think you can stay here?

That is a different walk — slower, more intrusive, and needing a way of approaching strangers that does not change the thing being measured. It would turn a hundred and five from one person's error rate into something about a population.

It is the first of the six questions on the page about what a second walk would settle, and it is the only one that would change what this site is allowed to claim.

What a reader may do with it

Three readings of the hundred and five, in descending order of what this record supports.

Supported. One walker, guessing in a fixed way before checking, expected a limit in a hundred and twenty-eight places and found one in twenty-three. That is a count of a walk.

Plausible and untested. That other people make the same guess. The observer is not unusual in any way the record can identify, the assumptions were made quickly and without deliberation, and the places are ordinary. None of that is evidence.

Not supported. That half the population of a city walks around believing itself restricted. Nobody was asked anything.

The front page carries the first. The second appears nowhere on this site except as a question. The third is on the list of what the record refuses.

The cheapest possible check

Three people in each place, one sentence: how long do you think you can stay here?

Asked before anything is explained, written down, and compared with what the place states. Two hundred and six places, three answers each, and the central finding either holds or collapses.

That is a harder walk than this one — approaching strangers changes the room, and in a church or a laundrette the question is intrusive in a way it is not in a café — but it is the same sheet with one column added, and it is the only change that would alter what this site may claim.

Why the field survives the objection

Because it is the half of the record that makes the other half mean something.

A count of what places permit is a civic fact and a slightly dull one: four rooms in five let you stay. It becomes interesting only against what is supposed about them, and supposing is not a thing a walk can observe in anybody but the walker.

So the record has one person's suppositions, labelled as such, on every page that uses them — and the alternative was not a better figure but no figure at all.

What the record claims in the meantime

Narrowly: that in two hundred and six places in one city, a walker recording their expectation in a fixed way before checking it expected a limit a hundred and twenty-eight times and found one twenty-three times.

That is a true statement about a walk. Whether it is a statement about anybody else is exactly what has not been shown, and the page on what this record refuses puts it at the top of the list.