Editorial standards

Sourcing

Every factual claim in a published piece traces to a listed source. In order of preference we use: primary documents (service manuals, schematics, datasheets, released source code, patents, court filings), period publications held in archives, statements and documentation from the people and companies involved, and then secondary reporting from outlets with their own corrections policies. Forum posts and wikis are used for leads, never as the only support for a claim. Each source carries the date we accessed it.

Verification dates

Every piece shows the date it was last verified. That is the day a person re-checked the prices, versions, availability and links in it.

We never set a verification date on which checks did not happen. News pieces carry a status: developing, confirmed or updated.

Hands-on claims

If a piece says we built, measured, repaired or ran something, we did. Reviews state their basis: hands-on, research, or reader-reported. Writing "we tested" when nobody did is grounds for dismissal. A review based on research says so in its first screen, not in a footnote, and it names what it could not check.

Independence and disclosure

Nobody buys coverage. We do not run sponsored editorial. If a vendor lends hardware or supplies a product, the piece says so near the top. Staff declare their own collecting and trading interests when they touch a subject.

Corrections

Material errors are fixed in the piece and recorded on the corrections page with the date and what changed. Typographical and style fixes are not logged. Readers can report an error from every page; reports go to a public issue tracker so the record of what was raised and what we did about it is open.

Use of software tools

Research, drafting and editing at RetroMake use software tools, including language models, under a person's direction. The rules above apply regardless of how a sentence was first produced: a claim is published because a person checked it against a source, not because a tool generated it. Images are credited with their origin. We do not publish generated images of people or of news events.

The historical record

Much of what we cover was built by people who are still alive and by companies whose records are incomplete. When accounts conflict, we say so and show both. We use the names and handles people used at the time, and we do not publish private information about members of the historical BBS scene.

Accessibility

The terminal presentation is a layer over ordinary HTML. Every page must reflow without horizontal scrolling at 200 percent text size, work with a keyboard alone, and carry text alternatives for art and screenshots. If something fails this, it is a bug and we would like to hear about it.