Editorial Policy
This page explains how Elder Scrolls Forum handles claims, corrections, and AI. It applies to everything published in the site's own voice (announcements, pinned guides, news summaries) and sets the standard moderators enforce in the news and lore categories.
Sourcing hierarchy
Not all sources carry equal weight. When claims conflict, the higher tier wins:
Official material. Released games and their in-game texts, official announcements from Bethesda Softworks or ZeniMax, patch notes, and official channels. This is the only tier that can be stated as plain fact without qualification.
Dated, attributable interviews and statements. A named developer saying something on the record, with a date and a link. These are quoted as what that person said at that time, since plans change and old quotes go stale.
Labelled rumour. Everything else: unverified leaks, anonymous claims, datamining interpretations, and reasonable inference. These may be discussed, but they must be labelled as rumour or speculation, and they are never presented in headlines or summaries as confirmed.
A rumour does not get promoted up the hierarchy by being repeated, being popular, or appearing on a large site. It gets promoted when an official source or an on-record statement confirms it.
Corrections
We get things wrong sometimes. When we do:
Errors are fixed in place, visibly. Corrected posts carry a note stating what was wrong and when it was fixed. We do not silently edit substance.
Headlines that overstated a claim are corrected, not just the body text.
Anyone can flag an error. Use the report function or contact the moderation team; a human reviews every correction request.
The record stays. We do not delete a thread to hide a mistake. Removal is reserved for rule violations, not for embarrassment.
AI policy
Content published in the site's own voice is human-reviewed and human-accountable. Research and drafting may be AI-assisted, but the verification standard does not change: a named editor checks every published claim against its source and stands behind it. Specifically:
Site pages, announcements, and news summaries are reviewed by a person before publication. Where an AI tool helped gather or draft material, a human editor verified each factual claim against the sourcing hierarchy above, corrected what was wrong, and owns the result.
We do not publish unchecked machine output. Language models are known to invent plausible-sounding Elder Scrolls lore, so an AI-assisted draft is treated as unverified until an editor confirms each claim against an official source or an on-record statement. A machine-summarised "news" claim that no human has checked does not go up.
Members are expected to post their own words. Passing off unedited AI output as your own analysis, or as sourced fact, is treated the same as posting an unsourced leak: it gets labelled or removed.
The line is verification and accountability, not the tool. Spellcheck, translation help for non-native English speakers, and research assistance are all fine. What matters is that a human stands behind each claim and its source. If we get something wrong, tell us and we will correct it.
Questions about this policy can be raised with the moderation team on the forum. This page will be updated in place, with dated notes, as the policy evolves.
