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Slat & Shade

Editorial policy

What we will and will not publish, who gets to influence it, and what happens when we get something wrong.

Last updated

Independence

No manufacturer, retailer or advertiser has any input into what appears on this site. Specifically:

  • No paid placements. We have never accepted payment to include, rank or review a product, and we will not.
  • No sponsored picks. Nothing on this site is a sponsored recommendation, and there is no tier of coverage a brand can buy.
  • No products supplied for coverage. No manufacturer has sent us a structure. If one ever does, that fact will appear prominently on every page that mentions the product — in the body copy, not in a footnote.
  • No brand approval of copy. We do not send drafts to manufacturers for review, and we do not remove criticism on request. We will correct a factual error from any source, including a manufacturer, and we will say what changed.
  • Commission never affects a ranking. Every product link pays the same rate, so the incentive to distort a ranking does not exist. See the affiliate disclosure.

Corrections

We will get things wrong. Manufacturers change published specs without notice, listings get edited, and we misread pages like anyone else. What matters is what happens next.

  1. 01Report it to contact@slatandshade.com — a link to the page and the figure you think is wrong is enough.
  2. 02We check it against the manufacturer's current published material.
  3. 03If we were wrong, the page is corrected within seven days of us confirming it.
  4. 04The correction is noted on the page with a dated correction line, and the last-updated date moves.

We do not make silent edits to factual errors. If a number on this site changes because it was wrong, the page will say so. Quietly swapping a figure and moving on would mean a reader who acted on the old one never finds out — and it would make every other number on the site unverifiable, because you would have no way of knowing what had been changed.

Corrections for typos, broken links and clarifications that do not change a fact are made without a correction line.

Review cadence

Every content page carries a visible last-updated date, and that date has to mean something. A refresh must involve a real change — bumping a date to look fresh is prohibited on this site, and it is the most common form of dishonesty in this niche.

Durability Tables and roundup picks are re-checked quarterly: every cited spec against the manufacturer's current listing, and every pick for whether it is still sold. A discontinued or out-of-stock pick is replaced within seven days of us finding out. Comparison pages are reviewed every six months, guides annually, and outbound citations quarterly for links that have died. The full table is on the methodology page.

How pages are written

Every page on this site is written and reviewed by Ryder M. before publication. We use software in the process — for collating published specifications, checking links and drafting — and no page goes live without being read end to end by a person who is accountable for it.

That accountability is the point of the commitment, not the tooling. What we will not do is publish at a volume a person could not review, or let a page make a claim its author has not checked. If you find a sentence on this site that reads as though nobody read it, that is a bug and we would like to hear about it.

What we will not publish

  • A claim of hands-on testing. We have no product access and no test rig, and every page says so in the method line.
  • A wind rating, snow load, GSM figure, gauge or warranty term we cannot trace to the manufacturer. Missing figures are written "Not published by manufacturer".
  • Star ratings, review counts, testimonials or awards. No review data exists for this publisher and none will be invented.
  • Prices, discounts or price predictions.
  • A credential, license, qualification or years-in-business figure for our author beyond what is stated on the about page.
  • A recommendation for a product we cannot verify is currently sold.

Scope and limits

Slat & Shade is a research and comparison publisher, not an engineering practice. Nothing here is engineering advice, and nothing here substitutes for a local building department or a licensed contractor. Permit and code statements vary by jurisdiction and are framed as such throughout — always check locally.

Questions about any of the above go to contact@slatandshade.com.