Editorial & Verification Policy

What "verified" means here

Every record on this site — a standard, a certification scheme, a country-level regulatory record, an accreditation body — carries two things: a link to the primary source it was checked against, and the date of that check. The date describes the check, not the page. Editing a paragraph, fixing a typo, or redesigning how a record is displayed does not move that date; only re-confirming the record's facts against its source does.

"Primary source" means the standard-setting body's own published text, an accreditation body's own official register, or the government register or legal text that creates a legal obligation — not a news article about it, not a summary on another site, and not another directory's entry for the same thing.

What gets published, and what stays in the queue

A record is not published until its facts are confirmed against a primary source. If a source is ambiguous, contradicts another source, or simply has not been checked yet, the record — or the specific claim inside it — is held in a verification queue rather than published with a guess attached. This applies even when withholding a record is the less convenient outcome: a certification scheme whose accreditation model could not be confirmed, for example, does not appear in the directory until it can be.

This library does not generate template pages by substituting a country or industry name into a fixed shape. Every page reflects a record that was individually checked; there is no page on this site that exists only because a pattern says one should.

Jurisdiction and scope, stated exactly

Where a rule applies to an entire country, the record says so. Where a source scopes a rule more narrowly — to England rather than the whole United Kingdom, to a specific US state, to a bloc rather than a single country — the record carries that narrower scope rather than rounding up to the broader one. A record that is silent about scope is not the same claim as a record that states the scope explicitly, and this library treats the difference as load-bearing, not cosmetic.

Corrections

Sources change: a standard is revised, a body's register moves to a new address, a law is amended. When that happens, the affected record is re-checked against the current source and its verification date moves to reflect the new check. A correction is not a silent edit — the date on the record is the evidence that a check took place, and it is visible on the page itself.

Independence

A record's classification and its verification status are not for sale. If this library ever carries paid placement — it does not today — a paid record is labelled as such and is held to the same verification standard as every other record; payment changes where something is seen, never what it is verified to say.