Editorial policy
This page is the editorial policy of Iron City Dispatch: what we will print, what we will not, who pays for what, and what happens when we get something wrong. It is deliberately specific, because a policy written in generalities cannot be used to hold a publication to anything.
1. Sourcing
A claim about a rule is sourced to the instrument that contains the rule, by article number, not to a summary of it. A claim about a protocol is sourced to the specification. A claim about a product’s behaviour is sourced to the vendor’s own documentation, dated, because that documentation changes without notice. Secondary coverage may be cited as coverage — never as the authority for the underlying fact.
2. Figures
Thresholds, fines, deadlines and percentile targets are quoted with their unit and their qualifier intact. “Two hundred milliseconds” on its own is not a fact; “Interaction to Next Paint at or below 200 ms at the 75th percentile” is. Where a figure has a currency ceiling and a percentage ceiling, both are printed, together with which of the two applies.
3. Commissioned material
Some pages on this site are placements: a third party paid for the material to appear, and its outbound links carry editorial weight. Those pages are marked at the top, every time, in the same plate, and they are excluded from the ticker and from editor’s picks. Commissioned material does not get to make claims the desk would not print, and a placement is never framed as a review, a test or a recommendation by the publication.
Nothing in the other direction is for sale: coverage on the desks cannot be bought, and no advertiser sees a piece before publication.
4. Outbound links
Links in our own material point at primary sources and are marked so that search engines do not read them as endorsements. Links inside commissioned material are live by agreement, which is disclosed on the page. We do not remove a link from archived material to tidy up a link profile; what was published stays published.
5. Bylines
Material is credited to the desk, not to invented individuals. A trade publication of this size does not have a masthead of named correspondents, and inventing one to look larger would be the first lie on the page. Where an outside author supplies material, that is a commissioned placement and is marked as such.
6. Corrections and updates
A factual error is corrected on the page, with a dated line at the foot saying what changed. A correction is never made by quietly deleting the sentence. Where a rule we described has since changed, the page carries an update line rather than being rewritten to look as if it was always right. Requests go to the desk at [email protected] and are answered.
7. Takedowns and personal data
We do not publish the names, photographs, direct telephone numbers or private addresses of individuals who are not acting in a public professional capacity. Where such material was inherited at this address, it has been removed rather than carried across — see the desk for what that meant in practice here.
8. Corrections to this policy
This policy is versioned with the site. The current version is in force as of .