Editorial policy
The rules this desk works to: named sources, dated checks, no sponsored cards, no invented figures, and the corrections that follow a reader's letter.
What is written here
Every card answers one question about hiring or driving a car in the Western Isles, and answers it for a reader who is going to do the thing. The desk writes from sources it can name: the operator's published conditions, the ferry timetables of the companies that run the routes, the Scottish road guidance that applies, the weather and tide services that forecasters publish, and the notices that island businesses and councils put out.
What is never written here
No figure appears without a source, and no figure is presented as fixed when the season moves it. No card promises availability, a price or a crossing. No card is sponsored, paid for, or written to please an operator. Nothing on this desk is for sale, and no card asks the reader to buy anything from us.
Dates and revisions
Each card carries the date it was filed and the date it was last checked. A card is revised in place when its source changes: the call number stays, the date moves, and the correction is what a reader sees, rather than a note at the bottom that no one reads. Cards older than a season are re-read before they are trusted.
Images
The plates are a record of the place a card describes: a slipway, a single-track road, a harbour at the hour the ferry leaves. A plate is captioned with its scene and its call number, never with a headline, and its alt text describes what a photographer would say they saw. Where an image is generated, the credit in the footer says so.
Corrections and removal
A reader's correction is filed against the card and answered. Where a card is wrong, it is rewritten rather than patched, and the date says when. A card that cannot be sustained by its sources is withdrawn from the catalogue rather than left standing.