Editorial standards

AutoAktuell publishes under the names of its editors. A piece without a name is a desk note, and it is labeled as one. News is written by us. We do not run a maker's release with the verbs changed and call it a story.

Independence

We do not sell placement, awards, or review scores. Advertising, if it ever appears, will be marked as advertising and will not buy a position in a test. A maker who offers a fee for inclusion is refused, and the offer is the end of the conversation. Staff do not review a product they have a stake in. Priya Nand, standards editor, can pull a piece that fails this rule. She does not need the editor's permission to do it.

Gifts are returned or left unused. A loan of a gadget for a test is a loan. It goes back.

Facts and inventions

We do not invent a quotation. We do not invent a test we did not run. If a passage is our judgment, it is written as judgment. If a passage is a measurement, the piece says on which car and over what period.

Corrections

A correction is part of the piece, not a quiet edit. Write to the desk through the imprint with the subject line Correction, the URL, and the sentence you dispute. If we were wrong, we add a dated note and we say what changed. We do not pretend the first version never ran.

A right of reply from a person or a maker we have criticised is considered by the editor and is not a right to replace the piece. It is a right to have a fair reading of the complaint.

Awards

Best Car Gadget lives in one content file with the winner, the date, and the reason, so the citation can be replaced in full. Hands-on scores, when a piece has them, use the method in How we test. The layout does not keep a second, hidden winner.