Editorial standards
1. Mission
Three commitments, in priority order:
- Accuracy over speed. A topic page that doesn't exist yet is better than a page that misinforms a reader.
- Transparency over authority. The full generation history of every article — drafting model, fact-check report, re-review schedule — is visible from the article. You do not have to trust us; you can verify.
- Calibration over confidence. We label what we know strongly, weakly, anecdotally, contestedly, or not at all. We do not pretend to certainty we don't have.
2. Source tiers
Every citation is classified into one of these tiers, displayed on the article:
- Peer-reviewed: scientific journal articles.
- Government: agencies, regulatory bodies, intergovernmental orgs.
- Reported: established journalism with editorial standards.
- Book: established publishers, especially in horticulture, pharmacology, history.
- Practitioner: documented breeder/grower records with verifiable provenance.
3. Evidence labels
Every factual claim carries an evidence label:
- Strong: multiple high-quality sources, replicated findings, systematic reviews or multiple RCTs for medical claims.
- Weak / limited: some peer-reviewed support exists but is limited, mixed, or unreplicated.
- Anecdote: common claim in the field, no controlled research support.
- Disputed: credible sources actively disagree. We present the disagreement and do not arbitrate.
- No data: the question has not been meaningfully studied.
4. AI usage policy
What AI does
- Drafting assistance: Anthropic Claude produces the first draft, with source claims attached to citations.
- Fact-check automation: OpenAI GPT independently audits the draft, flagging unsupported claims, likely-hallucinated sources, and overstated evidence.
- Scheduled re-audits: published articles are rechecked on a rolling schedule (~90 days).
What AI does not do
- Provide personal advice. We are an encyclopedia, not a chatbot.
- Auto-publish medical articles. Those are held for operator approval.
- Override the operator. The operator can retire, regenerate, or delete any article at any time.
5. Human oversight
One human operator runs this site. Their role is quality control, not authorship. They review the previous week's published articles, approve held medical drafts, and add new topics to the generation queue. They do not edit article bodies directly; instead, they trigger regeneration when an article is wrong.
6. Sponsored content
Weedpedia does not currently accept sponsored content of any kind. If this changes in the future, sponsored content will be clearly labeled and walled off from encyclopedia articles. Encyclopedia articles will never be sponsored under any circumstances.
7. Corrections
Readers can flag errors through the report button on any article. Confirmed errors trigger regeneration; the old version remains in the generation history. We do not silently delete content.