A reference site earns trust the same way a philosopher does: by showing its work. These standards are not decoration — they are the constraints every page on this site is written under, and stating them publicly is what makes them checkable.
01Sourcing and accuracy.
Substantive claims are grounded in established scholarly reference works, principally the peer-reviewed Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, alongside primary texts. Those sources are listed on the page itself, not buried, so any claim can be traced. Facts are never invented to fill a gap: where something cannot be verified, the page either omits it or marks it explicitly as uncertain. Dates and doctrinal summaries follow conventional scholarship, and where scholars genuinely disagree, that disagreement is reported rather than flattened.
02Quotation and attribution.
Direct quotations are kept short and are attributed to the person who actually said them. This matters more than it sounds: philosophy is full of lines confidently credited to the wrong person, and repeating them is how misinformation calcifies. Where a famous formulation is really a later paraphrase or a translator's phrasing, the page says so. Where an idea is summarised rather than quoted, it is presented as a summary, not dressed up in quotation marks.
03Evenhandedness and disagreement.
Most questions in philosophy are open, and a reference site that hides that is lying by omission. The policy here is to state each position as its own strongest defenders would state it — the steel-man, not the straw-man — and to let readers weigh them. Pages do not advocate a conclusion on contested questions, and where the site's own framing involves a judgement call, it is flagged rather than presented as neutral fact.
04Sensitive topics and limits.
Several subjects here — death, grief, immortality, meaninglessness, suffering — are philosophical questions that are also, for many readers, personal ones. Those pages are written with care: no overclaiming, no glib resolutions, and clear signposting toward proper support where it may be needed. Nothing on this site is medical, psychological, legal, or financial advice, and none of it substitutes for a qualified professional or someone who knows you.
05Corrections and updates.
Errors get fixed rather than defended. If you find a misattributed quotation, an incorrect date, a position stated unfairly, or a broken claim, report it and it will be corrected. A dedicated corrections contact is being set up and will be published here. Reported errors are checked against the cited encyclopedia entries and corrected, with the page updated rather than silently changed. Pages are reviewed periodically and revised as understanding improves or scholarship changes; substantive corrections are made openly rather than silently.
06Independence and disclosure.
This site is independently produced. It currently runs no advertising, no sponsored content, and no affiliate links; if that ever changes, it will be disclosed on this page before it appears. Content is produced with AI assistance under human editorial direction, and every external citation is verified against the publisher’s own index before it ships. Analytics are used to understand which ideas readers find useful, and are only enabled with your consent — nothing is stored unless you agree.