What does “based on a true story” mean to you?

When a movie starts with a text card that states what you’re about to see is “inspired by true events,” how does that change the way you think about the story? 

Younger Steve believed it bestowed journalistic credibility, predicated on the assumption that the creators conducted extensive research to weed through subjective perspectives in order to verify and corroborate individual claims into some sort of sourced whole.

But movies like The Deliverance serve as reminders that “based on a true story” does not necessarily denote anything more concrete than “at least one person seems to believe that something like this actually happened.”