About the project

A clearer path to the governing rule

Can I Detect Here? helps people find the official authority behind a public-location metal-detecting answer without pretending that every place has a simple yes or no.

The problem

Metal-detecting guidance is scattered across statutes, administrative rules, park pages, permit forms, maps, ordinances, and posted instructions. Community advice can be useful context but is often out of date, overscoped, or unable to authorize an activity.

The product

The site turns official-source research into structured records with a plain-language status, exact scope, permits, restrictions, evidence summaries, check dates, uncertainty, and a visible human-review state.

The initial focus

Michigan and Ohio are the first research areas in a broader Great Lakes program. Nationwide expansion is supported by the data model and URLs, but new state pages will not be generated until they have substantive researched coverage.

What the project will not do

It will not infer permission from silence, invent permit facts, publish sensitive archaeological locations, use thin location pages for search traffic, or disguise a machine-researched draft as a human-approved answer.