How claims get made here, and what happens when they cannot be supported.

This site makes factual statements about objects, mechanisms, materials, and the people who make them. Those statements are only worth anything if the rules behind them are visible. Here are the rules.

Verified, or flagged

Every specification published here is either bench-tested or confirmed by the maker. Where a detail cannot be confirmed, it is marked as a gap rather than filled with a plausible guess.

This is the rule most often broken elsewhere in the category, usually with good intentions. A number copied from a marketplace listing, repeated three times across three sites, becomes a fact that nobody has ever measured. Nothing enters an object file that way.

Whose voice is whose

Maker statements and editorial interpretation are always separated and labelled. When a maker says a design decision was made for a particular reason, that is reported as their account. When this site draws a conclusion from an object, that is reported as interpretation. The two are never blended into a single confident sentence.

Where material has been translated, translation is literal first. Smoothed editorial phrasing is only used after the maker has confirmed it carries their meaning. Anything inferred rather than said is marked as inference.

No admiration without evidence

Evaluative claims require mechanical proof. An object is not called excellent, refined, or well-made unless the specific mechanical reason is given in the same breath — what was done, and what it produces in the hand.

The practical consequence is that this site is bad at hype and good at description. That is deliberate.

Prices do not appear in files

Object files and maker files never carry prices, domestic or export. Two reasons. First, price is the fastest way to turn a reference document into a shopping page, and it dates faster than anything else on the page. Second, makers in this category sell across several markets at different prices, and publishing one of those figures in English can create problems for them that have nothing to do with the object.

Value and cost are discussed where they belong — in educational writing about why work at this scale costs what it does, without attaching a number to a specific object.

The commercial firewall

Coverage cannot be bought. No maker, retailer, or partner can purchase an object file, a maker file, or a placement, and no commercial relationship grants influence over editorial conclusions.

Subjects may request factual corrections. They may not request changes to interpretation, tone, or conclusions. Where a commercial relationship exists — referral, consultancy, gifted object, personal friendship — it is disclosed on the page where it is relevant and on the disclosure page.

When this site is wrong

It will be. The correction process, including what gets fixed silently and what gets logged publicly, is on the corrections page.