Editorial policy
Sourcing standards, correction policy and update cadence -- plus the specific claims this site has committed to never make.
Last updated September 2, 2026
Sourcing standards
Every factual claim on this site falls into one of these categories:
| Claim type | Required source |
|---|---|
| Product specification | Manufacturer product page, spec sheet or owner's manual, linked and dated |
| Computed figure | Inputs and formula shown on the page beside the result |
| Price | Live price data feed only. No live price means "Check price" |
| Airline baggage limit | The named carrier's published policy, linked and dated |
| Industry statistic | Original source, linked and dated. Never an aggregator |
Two rules that follow from that
We never cite another affiliate publisher as the source of a specification. Competitor pages are competitive intelligence, not references. If a figure appears on three review sites and no manufacturer page, we do not publish it.
Every citation carries the date it was read. Specifications change between model years, and a citation without a date does not tell you whether it is still true.
When a specification is missing
The cell says "Not published" and stays empty. We do not estimate it, infer it from a similar product, or carry it across from a competitor's table.
This matters more than it sounds. An invented number is indistinguishable on the page from a measured one, so a single estimate quietly devalues every other figure in the table. In this category the blanks are frequently the most informative thing on the page -- three of eight kayaks publishing no working pressure is a finding, not a formatting problem.
Update cadence
| Frequency | What happens |
|---|---|
| Daily | Price data refresh; the "prices checked" date updates |
| Monthly | Top-pick availability check; dead picks replaced |
| Quarterly | Spec tables re-verified against current manufacturer pages; computed figures recalculated |
| Annually | Full methodology review |
| On error report | Corrected within 7 days, with a visible correction note |
Every page shows a last-updated date reflecting a real content change, never a build timestamp. Our sitemap works the same way. A site that stamps every page as freshly updated every time it deploys is training search engines to ignore the one honest freshness signal it has.
A related rule: if a page cannot be kept current, its title does not carry a year. Four of the competitor pages measured during our research were between eight and eighteen months stale while carrying a current year in the title. Better no year than a wrong one.
Corrections
Corrections are made visibly. If a figure was wrong and somebody acted on it, quietly changing the number and moving on is not a correction -- it is tidying up.
When we correct something substantive, the page's last-updated date changes and a note records what changed and when. Typo fixes and formatting do not get a note.
To report an error: the contact form has a spec-correction option, or email info@strokeandstern.com. A link to the manufacturer page showing the correct figure makes it much faster.
Language this site will not use
These are not stylistic preferences. Each one is a claim we cannot substantiate, and publishing an unsubstantiated endorsement claim is an FTC problem as well as a credibility one.
- Any testing claim. "Tested", "we tested", "hands-on", "field-tested", "we paddled", "our test unit", "in our lab". We have tested nothing.
- Any tenure or credential claim. "Long-time", "veteran", "seasoned", "X years", "expert", "specialist", "our expert panel". None of it is true here.
- Manufactured urgency. "Act now", "don't miss out", "limited time", "selling fast". We hold no inventory and run no sales, so any urgency would be a lie.
- Invented prices, ratings, review counts or awards.
- Superlatives we have not sourced. "Best-selling", "#1 rated", "award-winning" -- unless cited.
Reviews, ratings and testimonials
There are none on this site, and there will not be. We have no first-party ratings and we do not aggregate anybody else's. Nothing here emits Review or AggregateRating structured data either, because marking up an editorial opinion as a product rating asserts a measurement that does not exist.
Where a score column would sit in a comparison table, we put the ranking figure instead -- packed linear inches, pounds, strokes. It is a fact with a manufacturer's name attached to it and it is more useful to a buyer anyway.
Who writes this
Scooter M., an enthusiast with no credentials in this field and no professional background in it. The full and rather short biography is here. Every editorial page carries that byline and a real last-updated date.
Independence
Stroke & Stern is funded by Amazon affiliate commission and takes no paid placement, no free product and no sponsored content. The disclosure page covers exactly how the money works, and how we rank covers the method those rankings follow.