Editorial standards
How pieces are written, checked, and what we refuse to publish.
Three kinds of thing appear here and they are never presented as one another: reporting from other outlets, carried as a headline and a link; pieces written here under our own byline; and reader-contributed trail reports, which carry the contributor’s name.
Some pieces are written with machine assistance under editorial direction. Where that is so, the piece still carries our byline and our responsibility, and every rule below applies to it identically.
We do not publish torque values, fluid capacities, tire pressures, load ratings or spring rates. Those live in your service manual. A wrong number in any of them can put a wheel on the road behind you, and no editing process is reliable enough to catch a plausible-looking wrong number every time. So we do not carry them at all, and we say why.
We do not describe a part as fitting your machine unless our fitment data covers your model year. A part listed for a 2018 is not necessarily a part for a 2015, and "close enough" is how people end up with a spacer where a bracket should be.
We do not report a recall without its campaign number. Without one you cannot check whether your machine is affected, and we cannot check whether the recall exists.
We do not say a trail is open, closed or legal without naming the land manager or the statute that decides it. Those rules differ by district and change between seasons, and a stale answer sends someone to a locked gate or into a closure.
Recalls, safety notices, injuries and anything carrying a specification are read by a person before they publish. Nothing in those categories goes out automatically.