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  1. 1Three kinds of evidence
  2. 2The rules every quote passes
  3. 3Awards and badges
  4. 4How we rank
  5. 5How a guide is put together
  6. 6Corrections and removals

  1. Three kinds of evidence

    Where each one enters, and how it is checked.

    Owner reports

    What owners write about a product in public discussion communities once they have lived with it. Every thread a quote comes from is archived: a full copy is stored with its address. The fetcher reads each site's robots rules and paces its requests, and communities whose terms do not allow this use are left out.

    Checked: a quote is kept only when its words are found, exactly, in the archived copy of its thread. Before a guide reaches a person for review the check runs again, and a thread that has disappeared takes its quotes with it.

    Buyer reviews

    Reviews on a product's own retail listing, written in the United States, the market this site serves. Reviews pasted or read from a listing are marked verified when the retailer marks them so, and then only verified purchases are used. A product's top reviews read through a product-data service carry no such mark: they are captioned as buyers' reviews and never called verified. Either way the listing is archived as it came. In a guide built around a product the editor placed first, that pick's quotes may come from the reviews on its own product page, each a short rewording marked “(paraphrased)” and kept on file beside the review's full words.

    Checked: an excerpt is accepted only when its words are found, exactly, inside that reviewer's own review in the archive. A review that reached us machine-translated is marked “(paraphrased)”, and an excerpt that names a price is not used. A listing whose archived copy is more than 30 days old has to be archived again before its guide passes its checks.

    Specifications

    Sizes, materials and capabilities, entered by hand from manufacturer documentation, or taken from the product's own page or listing as its maker states them, with any price removed.

    Kept on file: the guides do not print specifications as a table. A guide draws on them when it describes a pick; where a page states nothing, it describes what is usual for that kind of product and that market.

  2. The rules every quote passes

    Each quote rule is a check the code runs, not a promise.

    • Quotes are copied, never composed. They are real people's words, taken from the archived copy, never reworded or tidied, and attributed only to the person who wrote them. A quote may be shortened to one unbroken passage of its writer's own words, never stitched from two.
    • Word for word, twice. A quote's words are checked against an archived copy of its source when the quote is taken and again before a person reviews the guide.
    • Marked when it is not exact. A quote that is not word for word carries “(paraphrased)” wherever it appears: a buyer review that reached us machine-translated, or the short rewording of a review on an editor’s pick’s own page.
    • At most six under the top pick and four under any other, one per person. A lower pick never shows more than the top one, unless the top one has none to show. Under each pick, the quotes closest to 40 words come first. A quote is chosen to fit, never cut to fit. A pick with no quote to show carries a short note on what to expect instead, never set as a quote.
    • Captioned by kind. A discussion quote carries the name its author posted under; a buyer's review carries the buyer's name and “Verified buyer” when the retailer marked it a verified purchase, or “Buyer” when it came from a product's top reviews, which carry no such mark.
    • No prices in the quotes. An excerpt that names a price is not used, and the guides are written not to name one: the retailer shows what something costs right now.
    • Printed as written. The writing around each pick draws on the quotes, the product’s own page and what is known of the market, and the page prints it as it was written.

  3. Awards and badges

    A pick's award label names the job it does best in its guide. Its badges come from a fixed set of eight, and nothing outside it is ever drawn:

    • Most recommended
    • Value for money
    • Owner favorite
    • Built to last
    • Easiest to live with
    • Great for beginners
    • Least upkeep
    • Quietest

    Each pick’s award and badges are chosen when the guide is written, and the page prints them as chosen.

  4. How we rank

    The editor sets the order of every list, weighed against what owners and buyers report, and each guide says how its order was set.

    In a guide built around a product the editor placed first, the other picks follow the stated rule, and the guide says that too.

  5. How a guide is put together

    The same steps for every guide, in this order.

    1. A question. The editor names a kind of product and who it is for.
    2. Sources. For a discussion guide, public threads where owners talk about that kind of product are found and archived. For a listing guide, the products are chosen from retail listings by the rule the guide states, and each listing is archived as the retailer shows it.
    3. Quotes. Excerpts are taken from the archived copies and kept only when their words are found there exactly.
    4. The writing. The introduction, the verdicts, the buying guide and the answers are drafted from those quotes, the products’ own pages and what is known of the market, and printed as written.
    5. The checks. Every quote is matched against its archive again, every discussion source has to still be there, a listing archived more than 30 days earlier is archived again, and code checks what a page needs to be built: every section present, and every product linked and pictured.
    6. Approval. Nothing publishes itself: every guide is approved before it goes live, and can be taken down at any time.
    7. Afterwards. A guide can be read against its sources again at any time, and the day someone does is recorded with it.

  6. Corrections and removals

    Every quote is stored with the thread or listing it came from, so a claim can always be traced back. If you wrote something we quoted and want it removed or attributed differently, tell us and we will act; we do not ask you to prove it is yours beyond what is reasonable.

    Found a specification that is wrong, a pick that no longer makes sense, or a link that goes to the wrong product? Those are the corrections we most want to hear about. Write to contact@restfulpicks.com or use the contact page. A corrected guide is published again.

What we refuse to do, and who pays for this site, are set out once, on the About page: who pays for this.

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