How we work

Editorial standard

Cited Cents is an educational field-guide library. It does not provide individualized financial, investment, tax, legal, or insurance advice and does not claim professional credentials it does not hold.

Minimum quality gates

Evidence first: every page includes source links to official or regulator-backed references for claims that affect money decisions.
Depth before speed: each guide includes assumptions, a practical framework, failure modes, and a decision checklist.
No deceptive monetization: ads and affiliate placement must not replace educational judgment or imply guarantees.
Freshness controls: dated, regularly reviewed content with explicit update paths and withdrawal plans for outdated claims.

Source hierarchy

Claims that may affect a financial decision begin with current primary sources: regulators, government agencies, official plan or product disclosures, and original legal or tax guidance. Secondary explanations can help with context but do not replace current rules.

AI assistance and editorial accountability

AI may propose topics, organize primary-source research, assist with drafts, check structure, and prepare updates. The Cited Cents Editorial Desk remains accountable for the published result. Every public guide must identify its assumptions, explain the decision in substantive detail, include a topic-specific worksheet, and describe what each official validation link confirms.

A page must pass gates for minimum depth, source relevance, duplicate language, prohibited claims, disclosure, reachable validation links, route generation, and a successful production build. The public library is deliberately smaller than the drafting catalog; pages that do not meet the current flagship standard are withheld. Passing a gate does not turn general education into individualized advice or professional review.

What makes a guide useful

These checks keep the library focused on practical decisions instead of surface-level explanations:

Originality: no paragraph-level reuse across guides and no structural templates that add no substantive distinction.
Practical depth: each page includes implementation, not just definitions, including assumptions, steps, and a worksheet.
Verification: every rule-sensitive claim must point to a live official source and include what the source confirms.
User value: content must be directly usable for a decision or a risk check. Purely cosmetic pages do not belong in the public library.
Honest positioning: disclosures and limitations are required wherever financial outcomes or commercial relationships are mentioned.

We intentionally keep the library volume controlled so each remaining page receives independent checks instead of broad scale publishing. This is the model we use for trust maintenance and reader usefulness.

Prohibited shortcuts

No invented readership, testimonials, comments, savings, or returns.
No fabricated authors, credentials, quotes, or product experience.
No guaranteed outcomes or undisclosed paid placement.
No date-sensitive limit or rate presented without a current source.
No copying or lightly rewriting another publisher’s article.

Corrections and updates

Each guide displays its publication and update baseline. Material rule changes should trigger a source recheck. If a page cannot be verified, the safer action is to remove or withhold the claim rather than publish an uncertain answer.

Our full correction policy explains how material changes are labeled and how source-backed corrections are handled.