Editorial Policy
Draft — prepared for review by qualified legal counsel before launch. Not yet legally reviewed.
Effective date: 20 July 2026 · Last updated: 20 July 2026
An encyclopedia is only as good as its working methods. This page describes exactly how content on All About Drinks is produced, checked and published.
Original, referenced, human-edited
Every entry is written for this site — we do not republish, spin or scrape content from elsewhere. Articles are researched against reputable published sources: scholarly histories, peer-reviewed research, recognised reference works, national and international institutions, and primary sources where they exist. Significant factual claims are cited in a "Sources & further reading" section at the foot of each article, so readers can check our work. Where drinks history offers legend rather than record — Shennong's kettle, the silk tea bag — we label legend as legend.
AI assistance, disclosed
We use AI tools to help draft and research some content, and we say so rather than hiding it. The rules are firm:
- AI may assist with drafting, summarising sources and suggesting structure.
- Every page is edited, fact-checked and approved by a human editor before it appears.
- Nothing auto-publishes. No page goes live without a named human taking responsibility for it.
- Articles drafted with AI assistance carry a note saying so in their sources section.
Review tiers
Not all content carries the same risk, so review is tiered:
- Standard review — all content: source-checking, fact-checking and a human edit before publication.
- Second reviewer — all content about alcoholic drinks: an additional editor checks compliance with our Responsible Drinking Policy (labelling, tone, no encouragement of excess) as well as factual accuracy.
- Qualified reviewer — any content touching health (caffeine effects, alcohol and health, allergens, pregnancy-related notes): reviewed by a person with relevant qualifications before publication, consistent with our Medical & Health Disclaimer.
Sourcing standards
We prefer primary and scholarly sources over popular retellings; we cross-check dates, attributions and statistics against at least two independent sources where possible; we do not cite content farms, and we treat marketing material from producers as a claim to be verified, never as a source of record. Where experts genuinely disagree, we report the disagreement instead of picking a side silently.
Independence
No producer, distributor, retailer or advertiser has any influence over what we publish — no sponsored entries, no paid mentions, no preview copies of articles. The full rules are in our Advertising Policy and Educational Disclaimer.
Cultural respect
Drinks belong to cultures, and cultures deserve accuracy. We write about every tradition — brewing, distilling, tea ceremony, coffee ritual, abstinence — on its own terms and with its own sources. No country is reduced to a stereotype; no practice is exoticised or mocked; colonial and other painful histories are told honestly rather than romanticised. Where a name or term has a preferred local form, we use it and explain it.
Image rights
Every image on this site requires a rights record before publication: what the image is, where it came from, and the licence or permission under which we use it, including any attribution the licence requires. No rights record, no publication — without exception. Our crediting practice is described on the Copyright & Attribution page, and rights holders who believe we have erred can use our takedown process.
When we get it wrong
Errors are corrected visibly under our Corrections Policy — every page shows a last-updated date, and substantive corrections are noted on the page. Report anything we have missed via the corrections form or hello@allaboutdrinks.xyz.