Editorial standards

1. What these standards are

These are the rules every Techowire article has to satisfy before it goes live, and the rules we use when we revise an article later. They exist so that a reader can tell the difference between a verified fact, an editorial judgement, and a guess.

2. Sourcing facts

• Specifications come from the manufacturer. Battery ratings, weights, dimensions, port wattages, water-resistance ratings and codec support are taken from the manufacturer’s published specification, not from a retailer listing or a third-party summary.
• Time-sensitive claims are checked. Where a claim depends on current availability, firmware behaviour or a launch status, it is verified against a primary source at the time of writing.
• Unverifiable claims are cut. If we cannot source a number, it does not appear. We do not estimate, interpolate or “round up” a specification.
• Inference is labelled. When our guidance is reasoning rather than a verified fact, the wording says so — “based on published specifications”, “this suggests”, “expect”.

3. What we never publish

• Invented star ratings, scores out of ten, or “editor scores”.
• Invented review counts, awards, certifications, warranties or price guarantees.
• First-person testing claims that did not happen. We do not write “after two weeks with this” unless somebody actually did it.
• Benchmarks, measurements or battery runtimes we did not perform and cannot cite.
• Fabricated customer testimonials or aggregated review quotes.
• Fake urgency, invented stock levels, or countdown timers to nothing.
• Medical, clinical or health-outcome claims of any kind.

4. How we label recommendations

Instead of a numeric score, every product record carries a scenario label — “Best for open-plan offices”, “Best value under $100”, “Best for small desks”. A scenario label makes a specific, falsifiable claim, and it can be argued with. A star rating cannot.

Each recommendation also states:

• what the product is genuinely good at, in a named scenario;
• what the buyer is giving up — the trade-off is mandatory, not optional;
• the published specification highlights the recommendation rests on;
• a last-checked date.

5. Affiliate independence

• No brand pays for a placement, a position in a list, or a label.
• Commission rates are not a ranking input. We do not sort by payout.
• Where a cheaper product is the better buy, we recommend the cheaper product.
• Every commercial page carries an affiliate disclosure above the first commercial call to action. Outbound commercial links are marked rel="nofollow sponsored".
• Where a merchant link is not yet configured, the call to action is disabled and labelled rather than pointed at a placeholder destination.

6. Prices

We do not quote prices as if they were stable. Prices move constantly, vary by region, and change with promotions we cannot track. Our calls to action therefore read “Check current price”, and every article states that the reader should confirm the current price with the merchant.

7. Corrections

If we get something wrong we fix it, and we do not quietly delete the evidence. Send corrections to [email protected] with the page URL and the specific claim. Corrections are treated as a priority over new content. Where a correction is material, the article’s updated date changes.

8. Review and retirement

Every product record is re-checked on a rolling cycle. A record is updated when a specification changes, and retired when a product is discontinued and no longer reasonably purchasable. We do not keep recommending a product solely because the page ranks well.

9. AI assistance

We may use software tools to help draft, structure or proofread content. Every published article is reviewed and approved by a human editor before publication, and the editorial standards above apply regardless of how a draft was produced. Facts are never published on the basis of a language model’s assertion alone.

10. Related documents

• Affiliate Disclosure
• About Techowire
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