Watt & Warden
Editorial Policy
What we accept, what we refuse, how we source a figure, and what happens when we get one wrong.
Independence
No payment influences a pick or a ranking on this site. Specifically:
- We accept no sponsored placements. No product appears in a roundup because someone paid for it, and no position in a ranking is for sale.
- We accept no free products. Accepting review units would create exactly the obligation our method exists to avoid, and it would compromise the one thing we can genuinely offer — a judgment nobody has bought.
- We take no advertising beyond the affiliate links disclosed on every monetized page.
- Commission rates do not affect rankings. Where a cheaper product is the better answer, it is the pick, whatever it pays.
The site earns through the Amazon Associates Program. The full disclosure explains exactly how.
Sourcing standards
Every factual claim on this site traces to something you can open.
| Claim type | Required source |
|---|---|
| Product specification | Manufacturer product page or spec sheet, linked |
| Runtime or capacity arithmetic | Formula and inputs shown inline, each input sourced |
| Outage statistics | EIA, with the data year stated |
| Fuel and electricity prices | EIA series, with the week or month stated |
| Appliance wattages | Manufacturer wattage references, linked |
| Safety guidance | CPSC, USDA, or the manufacturer's manual |
| Price | The live price data layer only, or “Check price” |
Four hard rules follow from that table:
- If it cannot be sourced, it is not published. “Not published by the manufacturer” is an acceptable cell value on this site and appears in several tables.
- No figure from memory. Not a specification, not a price, not an average outage length.
- Data vintage is stated. “EIA, 2024 data” rather than “according to the EIA”.
- Citations are visible inline links in the body, not a bibliography nobody scrolls to — plus a Sources section at the foot of every content page.
What we do not claim
- No testing claims. We do not test equipment and we do not imply otherwise, in copy, headings, tiles, alt text or structured data.
- No credentials we do not hold. No licensed electrician, no engineer, no expert panel, no medical review.
- No tenure claims. No “long-time”, no “years of experience”, no “veteran”. Sawyer V. is an enthusiast, framed by genuine interest rather than time served.
- No star ratings of our own, and therefore no
RevieworAggregateRatingstructured data anywhere on the site. A score would be an opinion dressed as a measurement. - No testimonials or user reviews. We have no customers, so there are none to publish, and inventing them is disqualifying.
Update cadence
| Content | Cadence | Trigger |
|---|---|---|
| Prices | Daily | Automated refresh from the live data layer |
| Roundups | Quarterly | A pick discontinued, superseded, or shifting price tier |
| Sizing arithmetic | Twice yearly | Fuel price movement, new specification data |
| Outage statistics | Annually | New EIA release |
| Safety guides | Annually | Any change in a standard or manufacturer guidance |
| Seasonal content | Twice yearly | Hurricane season, winter storm season |
The last-updated date on a page reflects a real content change. It is not bumped by a redeploy. The daily price refresh rebuilds the site; if that touched every date, the field would stop meaning anything within a month.
Corrections
We will get things wrong. Specifications change, manufacturers revise pages, and arithmetic has typos.
How to report one: the contact form, with the page and the figure you believe is wrong. Include the source if you have one — it makes verification much faster.
What we do: verify against the primary source, correct the page, note the correction where it materially changes a recommendation, and update the modified date. Where an error affected a pick, we say so on the page rather than quietly swapping it.
What we will not do: remove a correction later to make the page look cleaner.
Conflicts of interest
The author holds no financial interest in any manufacturer named on this site beyond the Amazon Associates commission disclosed on every monetized page. No manufacturer has any input into what is published here, and none is given an opportunity to review a page before it goes up.
Use of AI
Drafting and structuring on this site are AI-assisted. Every factual claim, specification and statistic is sourced from a real, linked, fetched primary source rather than generated — that is the entire point of the sourcing standards above, and it is why several tables on this site say “not published” instead of carrying a plausible number.
Where a figure could not be verified, the page says so. The method in full.