# What (active) means

On [the list](../views/tier-list.md), some names carry **(active)** next to them. That means somebody is doing this work right now.

We looked for a public record from the last 18 months: a filing, a job posting, a paper, an open application window, a dated news story. A website that merely loads does not count — parked and abandoned sites stay up forever.

Anything else shows the year of its last public record — (1869) for the transcontinental railroad, (2017) for a company that went quiet. No year means we could not date it, or have not checked yet.

The mark is not a grade. A finished achievement can be the most important thing on the list and still show a year from the nineteenth century. A small mixer can be (active). It only answers whether you could walk into this on Monday.