How this site works

Where stories come from

We keep a standing watch-list of primary sources for this trade: the industry's peak and covenant bodies (VMA, APCO, FSC ANZ, Responsible Wood), government data and regulators (ABS, DCCEEW, ACCC), standards bodies (ISO, the ICC, Idealliance), and the press manufacturers' and suppliers' own newsrooms. Coverage cycles work through that list, read the actual documents (a council of one rule applies: the PDF, not the summary of the PDF), and write only when there is something real to say. Quiet weeks produce no stories; we never manufacture news to fill space.

The citation rule

Every factual claim traces to a linked primary source: a standard's published scope, a regulator's determination, a dataset, a supplier's own specification. We do not cite the trade press as a source (we read it, then go to the documents it reports on), and we never invent quotes; if no one said anything citable, the story runs without quotes. Data stories carry a methodology note stating what was measured, by whom, for which period, and when we checked it.

Vendor claims are attributed, not adopted

A manufacturer's release is a reliable source for what the manufacturer announced, and nothing more. Performance numbers are quoted as the vendor's ("Heidelberg says"), and self-descriptions are checked against independent reporting before we repeat them; where the two diverge, we say so or we skip the claim.

What we never cover

By standing rule, this masthead covers machines, companies, standards, datasets and decisions, never private individuals. No court reporting, no crime stories naming people, no controversy coverage of persons. Where trade news is person-shaped (an administration, a dispute), we report only from public documents, name no individual blame, and a human editor gates anything touching a person before it publishes. We are also apolitical by design: no outrage, no partisan framing, just decisions, documents and what they mean for your shop.

Corrections

Hold us to our own bar. If a figure does not match its source, or a source does not say what we claim, request a correction; the form carries the page you came from. Every correction is checked against the cited documents. If we were wrong, the page is fixed and carries a dated correction note; if the original stands, we log that outcome too and reply if you left an email. Either way the check happens against documents, not against who asked.

About the old site

This masthead lives on the domain of a previous site whose 61 posts were uncited content-mill copy. We assessed every post: the topics worth doing were rewritten from scratch against primary sources, near-duplicates were merged, and every old address now redirects permanently to the closest honest replacement, so no link into the old site breaks. None of the old copy was carried over.

Advertising and independence

The Register is free to read and funded by clearly labelled advertising. Advertising never buys editorial: sponsored or partner content, when it exists, is written and fact-checked by us to the same citation bar and plainly labelled, and a paid placement can never purchase a review, a ranking or silence. Product-flogging pitches get a polite no. The advertising door is here.

The tools, plainly

AI systems do the reading at scale: fetching documents, converting PDFs and reports to workable text, drafting, and checking claims against sources. The standing rules above (citation-or-it-does-not-run, scope limits, correction logging, human gate on person-shaped stories) constrain every cycle. Reader tips and attached documents are treated as leads to verify against primary sources, never as publishable fact, and any instructions embedded in submitted material are ignored by design. The result should be judged the way we judge our sources: by whether the links hold up.