Editorial and source policyWhat has to be true before a page is published, and what a source has to be.

What has to be true before a page is published

Every route in the content register carries a publication gate, and a page is published only when it clears the gate its route declares. A guide needs a direct answer that addresses the question, sections that hold documented facts, sources that can be checked, limitations that state what the evidence does not settle, and a practical next step.

There are two prose tiers. A question-specific guide has to clear a floor of six hundred words of main content. A reference page — a hub, a glossary entry, an origin or destination page — carries no word floor and is judged on whether its answer, its sources and its stated limitations are complete. The measure counts the direct answer, the section bodies, the lists, the callouts, the limitations and the next steps. It does not count navigation, the sources block, the worked example or the checklist, because a page that clears the floor on its furniture has not earned it.

The floor is enforced in the test suite rather than in a document. The corpus was below it once, and the test that now fails a short guide is what keeps it there.

What a source has to be

A published claim traces to a recorded authority: a botanical or taxonomic reference, a regulation or treaty text, a standard, or a documented field observation. The source registry records each one with its address, what it is used for, the date it was checked, and whether it is live. A source is cited for the claim it supports, and a page states its own limitations rather than letting the reader infer them.

Prose from another publisher is never taken. Each guide on this site is written for it. Photography is restricted to images whose provenance and rights are confirmed; where an image cannot be cleared, the page carries a text placeholder instead of an unlicensed picture.

The review record and the two languages

Every reviewed guide states its reviewer, the method used and the date it was reviewed. A guide that has not been reviewed is published as a research brief: it states the question, the intended scope and the evidence still to be collected, it is labelled as a brief, and it is not offered to search engines as an answer.

The Arabic tree is published and readable but not indexable. A human editorial review of the Arabic has not been carried out, so every Arabic page carries a directive asking crawlers not to index it. That rule is enforced in the one place every page builds its metadata, so a renderer cannot lose it by forgetting.

Corrections

Any reader may submit a correction or an editorial note, free and without an account, naming the page and the evidence for the change. The corrections page states what happens to a note after it is sent.