Editorial Policy
This page describes how HomesteadingGear decides what to publish. It is written to be checkable rather than reassuring: where we have a rule, it says what the rule is; where we have a limitation, it says that too.
Who writes and reviews this site
There is currently no named individual editor, and we are not going to invent one. Content is published under organisation-level attribution: HomesteadingGear Editorial, an imprint of Anvil Road LLC.
A byline carrying a name and a credential is the single easiest thing for a site like this to fabricate, and the hardest thing for a reader to verify. Until a real person with a real, checkable background is accountable for this content, an honest masthead is worth more than a convincing one.
The technical framework for named authors and named reviewers is built and in place. When a real reviewer is appointed, their name appears on the pages they have actually reviewed, and nowhere else.
Which sources we accept, for which claims
We work down this order, and the order is not decorative — it decides what a page is allowed to assert.
- Federal or state government agencies
- University extension services
- Recognised standards and safety bodies
- Manufacturer manuals and published specifications
- Credible owner reports
Owner reports are never the authority for:
food safety, electrical safety, water contamination, pressure, structural safety, or chemical exposure. For those, only sources in tiers 1 to 4 are used.
Owner and community reports are used, and are genuinely valuable, for durability over years, usability, recurring failure modes, and setup frustrations — the things a bulletin does not know and an owner does.
What we will not do
- We do not claim to have tested things we have not tested. Where a figure is the manufacturer's, the page says so.
- We do not publish a universal safety number where none exists. Wood stove clearances are the clearest example: the honest answer is how to find yours, and that is what we publish.
- We do not put an affiliate link inside a safety instruction. The botulism page carries no purchase link at all. Commercial suggestions come after the safety answer or not at all.
- Commission does not affect ranking. We hold affiliate relationships with a minority of the brands we cover, and several products we rank highest earn us nothing.
- We do not fabricate reviewer credentials or ratings. No review schema, star rating or expert byline appears on this site unless it describes something real.
- We do not quietly delete products that became unavailable. They move out of the ranking into a labelled block that says what happened to them.
How claims are recorded
Factual pages carry a source list naming the organisation, the document, the date we read it, and the specific claims that source supports. The last part is the useful one: if a source moves or is revised, the question is which sentences stop being supported, and listing the claims makes that answerable instead of guesswork.
16
sources in the citation graph
16
of them primary sources
2
pages on a safety-critical review cadence
Review cadence
"Last reviewed" on our pages means somebody re-read the sources and confirmed the claims still hold. It does not mean the file changed. We do not bump a date to look fresh, because that destroys the only signal that tells us what genuinely needs checking.
| Content type | Reviewed | Also triggered by |
|---|---|---|
| Safety-critical | Every 90 days | Any revision to the underlying guidance |
| Product and commercial | Every 30 days | Availability or price movement |
| Stable informational | Annually | A change in the source standard |
Corrections and disclosure
Our correction process is described at /about/corrections, how we research at /about/research-methodology, and our affiliate relationships at the affiliate disclosure.