Editorial policy

Last updated

Sources

Primary sources first.

Every rule, fee or deadline we publish comes from a primary source: the state alcohol control agency, the state's official statutes, a county or city government page, or a federal dataset such as the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics. News reports from established outlets are used for events, such as a venue closing, and are named in the text.

We do not use forums, AI answers, vendor marketing or other guide sites as sources for facts.

Verification

How a fact gets on a page.

  1. An editor reads the official page and records each value with its source URL and the date it was checked.
  2. If the official site cannot be reached, we may use an Internet Archive copy of that same official page, but only if the copy is no more than 12 months old. The copy's date then becomes the fact's "verified" date. If the newest copy is older, the fact is left out.
  3. If a value cannot be confirmed, it is stored as unknown and the block that would show it is hidden. We do not fill gaps with estimates.
  4. Every page shows a review date and a numbered source list.
  5. Data is re-checked at least once a year, and right away when a reader reports a change.

Standards

Templates, corrections, ads.

Pages built from a shared template (one per state or metro area) must carry facts specific to that place. Our build process refuses to publish a data page with fewer than eight sourced facts or fewer than 400 words, or one that reads too much like another page in its section. We do not pad pages to reach a length: if the data is thin, the page waits.

Cost estimates follow published formulas; see the methodology.

When we fix an error, we update the page and its review date. Report one through our contact page.

Advertising, if shown, is labeled and kept apart from the content. No one pays to be included or to change what we write, and we do not accept free services in exchange for coverage.

Who is responsible

The editors. No invented experts.

Anchor Guide is written and maintained by its editorial team, credited as "Anchor Guide editors." We do not invent bylines, credentials or reviewer names. If a named expert ever reviews a page, the page will say who, what they checked and when.

No editor accepts payment, gifts or free services from venues, caterers, bar services, insurers or permit agencies covered on the site.

Editors may use software to fetch pages, compare text and generate tables from our database. Every published figure still traces to a source row with a URL and a date, and a page cannot be built without them.

Automated checks

What the build refuses to publish.

  1. Each fact is stored once, with its source URL and verification date, and every page that uses it updates on the next build.
  2. A build fails if a page title or description repeats, if a data page has fewer than eight sourced facts or 400 words, or if it overlaps more than 60% with another page in its section (measured on five-word phrases).
  3. Pages that fail are not published, and nothing else links to them.
  4. Strings that would make us look like a venue, such as a venue's phone number, street address or booking prompts, are blocked at build time.

Source levels

How much we trust each source.

Every fact is stored with a trust level, and the source list on each page says which kind of source it is.

  1. Official: the state agency's own website, or the statute on the state's own legislative site.
  2. Official text via a mirror or federal database: the same statute as published by Cornell's Legal Information Institute, Justia, Public.Law, Casetext or FindLaw (with the section number), or a federal summary such as NIAAA's Alcohol Policy Information System or NCSL. These are labeled, for example, "State statute (via Cornell LII)" or "Federal summary (NIAAA APIS)."
  3. Secondary: trade associations, server-training providers and price guides. We use them only when two independent sources agree, or to confirm an official source. Published bar-service prices are shown only for areas with at least three independent price sources. Blogs, forums and AI-generated sites are never used.

For statutes, the date shown is when we accessed the text.