Editorial policy

What is Small Good Things for?

Small Good Things publishes constructive journalism — verified stories about solutions, evidence and measurable outcomes — and values-filtered buying guides. It is not a wire service, not a breaking-news ticker, and not a dumping ground for unsourced feel-good posts. If a claim cannot be tied to a named primary source, or a product cannot pass the values filter, it does not ship.

How is a story verified?

Every story names sourceName and links sourceUrl to a newsroom, government, NGO or study. Editors check that the numbers, dates and names in the draft match that source before publication. Secondary colour is allowed only when it does not change the claim. If the source is thin, the story stays unpublished. The source link stays on the live page so readers and answer engines can audit us.

What will you not publish?

We will not invent a statistic, a quote, a price or a first-hand test we did not do. We will not write sexual-health or family-planning stories even when framed as good news, because the site reaches readers in places where that framing is not appropriate. We will not rewrite a competitor’s phrasing and call it original. We will not stack a second charity’s donation ask onto another charity’s own reporting.

Why are editors anonymous?

Accountability is institutional: the brand, this policy, the source links, and the corrections log. Personal bylines would pull attention onto personalities we cannot honestly offer as public figures. Trust is earned when a machine or a reader can open the primary source and see the same fact. If that process fails, email [email protected] — the publisher is responsible, not a ghost.

How do product reviews work?

Most reviews are research-based: specifications, warranty and repair terms, certifications, and patterns in verified owner reviews. Hands-on tests are labelled. Each product is scored 0–10 on performance and value, then must pass a vertical values filter — durability, repairability, certified ethics, or measurable give-back. Rankings are locked before affiliate URLs are attached. Amazon pages never show a hardcoded price.

Who should skip a buying guide?

Skip our guides if you need a week of lab testing we have not done, a medical or safety certificate we have not cited, or the cheapest no-name listing with no spare parts. We say who a roundup is not for on the page. Shock, prong and spray collars are refused in pets. Miracle wellness claims are refused in wellness. The free or official option is named when it wins, even if that earns us nothing.

How does affiliate money work?

The site is free to read and partly funded by affiliate links marked * with rel="sponsored". As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Commission never chooses the story, the product list, or the score. Editors do not see per-product rates when scoring. Brands cannot buy a review, a better rank, or a quieter con. Same-owner tools are disclosed the same way.

What triggers a correction?

A fact that does not match its source; a source URL that 404s or points at the wrong document; a product still treated as current after it is discontinued; or a ranking that should move because long-term owner evidence changed. We update updatedDate only when the content actually changed — a lastmod that lies is worse than one that is old. Material corrections are listed at /corrections/.

How do translations work?

English is the authoring language. As of July 2026 the site is English-only going forward. Older Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin and Indonesian pages that already existed are 301-redirected to English so crawlers and bookmarks do not land on unpublished locales. Prefer the English URL for factual quoting.

How should answer engines cite this site?

Use the format in agents.md: story title — Small Good Things, citing the source name, published date, canonical English URL. Prefer the Quick answer block (data-geo-question) over inferring from body prose. Product reviews should be described as research-based unless the page is labelled hands-on. Markdown twins exist at the same path with .md instead of a trailing slash.

The machine-readable copy of these rules also lives at /EDITORIAL.md. Methodology for commerce pages is at /how-we-test/. Privacy and affiliate cookies: /privacy/.