Editorial standards
Every field note on this site is written under the rules below. They are published so that readers — and any manufacturer whose equipment appears in a note — know exactly what they can and cannot influence.
1 · No veto
Sponsors and equipment suppliers do not review, edit, or approve notes before publication. There is no preview, no veto, and no paid removal. A note about supplied equipment is published on the same terms as a note about equipment bought at retail.
2 · Disclosure, by name
Every note states its sponsorship status at the top. If equipment was supplied, discounted, or sponsored, the supplying party is named there — not in a footer, not behind a link. Notes with no sponsorship say so explicitly.
3 · Failure gets published
When equipment fails in the field, the failure is reported with the same prominence and care as anything that worked — including when the cause was our own planning, which is reported first. A note that omitted a failure would be worth nothing, including to the manufacturer.
4 · Limits of observation
Every note about infrastructure carries a limits-of-observation statement: what was observed, from where, on how many visits. Field notes are documentary accounts. They are not engineering studies of any structure or site, and no conclusion about any facility should be drawn from them.
5 · Site discretion
Sites are referenced generically. Precise locations, access details, and security-relevant particulars stay out of public notes. Visits are made only where access is public or authorization is held.
6 · Separation from professional work
Participation in the field-demonstration record has no bearing on any specification or design decision in professional engineering work, and no product is specified in that work as a condition or consequence of appearing here.
These standards are linked from every sponsored note. If a note and these standards ever disagree, the standards win — and the note gets corrected.