Editorial standards
In short
Techarda editors approve every story before it appears, and nothing is published automatically. We summarise other publishers’ news and link to the original rather than copying it, rank by what readers do rather than by payment, label vendor staff on every post and disclose our commercial relationships in full.
This page is for anyone deciding how far to rely on a story, an evaluation guide or a community thread on Techarda. It describes what our editors and our software actually do, so you can hold us to it.
How stories are chosen
Our software collects headlines from the feeds of company newsrooms, blogs and trade publications we have chosen to follow. Each item lands in an editorial queue, unpublished. An editor reads it, checks the company and category it is filed under, and either approves or discards it. Nothing goes live on its own, and that includes news that companies send us through the vendor portal, which joins the same queue and gets the same review.
Techarda originals, such as comparisons and buyer's guides, are researched and written by our editors. One can't be published until it has a plain summary at the top and at least one statistic with its source named, and originals are always approved one at a time. Evaluation guides follow the same rule: no vendor pays to appear in one or sees it before publication.
Credit, excerpts and links
When a story comes from another publisher, you get the headline, a short excerpt of up to 400 characters, the publisher's name, the date they published it and a link to the original. We don't republish the article. The link opens the publisher's own page, with tracking tags removed, and the story's structured data names the original as its source.
We keep a headline's words, capitalisation and meaning exactly as published. The one change we make is to dash punctuation, which we convert to our house style; the original text is kept on file. Where an editor adds context, it appears in a box labelled “Why it matters”, so you can always tell our words from the publisher's.
House style
We write in plain Australian English, in short sentences, with sentence case headings. We don't use dashes or exclamation marks, and we avoid the stock phrases of marketing copy. Every figure in something we write has a source. We never invent numbers, quotes, customers, reviews or activity, and when a count is too small to mean anything we leave it out rather than dress it up.
How ranking works
“Top” ranks stories by what readers do with them (reading, clicking through to the source, saving, sharing, following and discussing), weighted towards recent activity so a story's score halves every 7 days, and recalculated every 30 minutes. Techarda originals get a small, published lift. “Newest” ignores all of that and sorts by date. Payment plays no part in either, and the methodology sets out the maths.
How we use AI, and how we don't
Software does three narrow jobs here. It collects headlines from feeds, it tags each story with topics and a category using published keyword rules (not a language model), and it spots company names in community posts the same way. It never decides what gets published.
Our editors may use AI writing tools to help draft or check longer pieces, such as evaluation guides. When they do, an editor checks every claim against its source, edits the text and is responsible for what goes live. We never use AI to write anything presented as coming from a member, a reviewer or a named person, and we never use it to make up figures or sources.
AI assistants and search engines are welcome to read our public pages. If you quote us, please cite the page's link.
Corrections
If we get something wrong, tell us at engage@techarda.com or through the corrections page. An editor checks the report against the original source and fixes the page if it is wrong. When a story's facts change, its byline shows the date it was updated. Companies can also correct their own profile facts by claiming their profile.
Independence and commercial relationships
Nobody pays to rank. Companies can't buy placement, change their position, remove critical reviews or see who individual readers are, and those rules apply equally to companies that work with us commercially.
Our commercial relationships, including Conversera and the sponsored campaign pages it runs for its clients, are disclosed in full under commercial relationships on the About page. Sponsored pages say so at the top and have no effect on what we cover or how anything ranks.
How community moderation works
Members join with a work email, confirm they are 18 or over and accept the community guidelines before they post. A moderator reads a new member's posts before they appear. Once a member has three published posts or 20 reputation, and nothing turned down in the past 30 days, their posts go live straight away and are moderated after. Anyone can report a post.
People who work for a vendor carry a staff label on every post and can't review their own company. Every review is read by a moderator before it is published, and star ratings only appear when published reviews sit behind them. Members' posts are stored exactly as written. Threads our editors start to get a space going are labelled Editorial.
Bylines
Stories we pick, guides and originals carry the byline “Techarda editors”. It means the editorial team chose, checked and approved the piece, and it links to this page. When a company or a named contributor wrote a piece, their name appears instead.