Editorial Policy

This policy covers how content on RE Digital Editions is researched, written, labeled, and corrected. The site is operated by DeltaSpark. The policy applies to the guides in the five sections described on the About page and to the reference pages in the Technical Library.

Figure 1 shows the path a guide follows from a reader question to publication and later correction. The sections below take each step in turn.

Byline

Most guides are published under the byline RE Digital Editions Editorial, the editorial byline for content DeltaSpark publishes on this website. It is not a separate certification body and does not imply a professional credential.

When an article names an individual author, the biography describes only experience that can be verified. A “Reviewed by” line appears only if a technical review was completed and the named person agreed to be credited. We do not publish invented job titles, test-laboratory claims, or placeholder author profiles. Authors of historical material stay credited as the original authors and are not presented as current staff.

Evidence and how guides are produced

Each guide starts with a specific reader question, and the sources that can answer it are identified before drafting. We prefer equipment manuals, manufacturer specifications, published standards, papers, and professional publications. Key figures keep their units, materials, operating conditions, versions, and dates. Figures from a supplier are attributed to the supplier, not presented as our measurements.

Sources we use

Each kind of source supports different statements. The table shows how we use each and where its limits lie.

Source type	How we use it	Limits
Equipment manuals and manufacturer documentation	To describe how a machine type operates and what information a supplier normally provides	Written for a specific model and version; may not apply to other models or configurations
Manufacturer specifications and brochures	To identify which parameters suppliers state and which questions to ask	Supplier statements; conditions of measurement may be missing, and we have not tested them
Standards and regulatory references	To point readers to the topic a document covers, described by scope	Applicability depends on the market and product; we do not quote requirements or give legal advice
Technical publications, papers, and professional articles	To explain principles and established practice	May be dated, may address different materials or conditions, and vary in how well their method is described
Our own analysis	To organize evidence, set out conditions, and build checklists and assumed examples	Not a test result; reflects the evidence available when the guide was written

Supplier claims and our analysis

Supplier figures are attributed to the supplier, with the unit, material, and operating conditions alongside them where the source gives them. A rated speed or accuracy figure is what the supplier says a machine can do under stated conditions. This publication did not measure it, and the guides do not present it as measured. Our analysis sits in separate sentences and sections, so readers can tell which statements come from a supplier and which from us.

Conditional comparisons

Comparison articles state the conditions under which each option fits, and they avoid unsupported claims such as “best” or “most reliable”. Maintenance and safety content gives no generic settings that claim to apply to every machine, and it never describes how to bypass interlocks or guards. Where safety is involved, guides point to a documented risk assessment and review by qualified people.

Worked examples are labeled “Assumed example” and exist only to demonstrate a method. They are not customer projects, test results, or market data. Their numbers are illustrative, and a plant should replace them with its own records. The guides on packaging line bottlenecks and packaging machine total cost take this approach. Real case material is used only when it is genuine and can be disclosed.

Safety content

Safety content stays at the level of general considerations and pointers. We do not publish settings that apply across machine types, describe how to defeat guards or interlocks, or describe work on energized or otherwise unisolated equipment. Guides that touch on safety send readers to the machine manual, a documented risk assessment, energy-isolation procedures, and review by qualified personnel. A guide does not replace any of these.

How references are cited

References are listed at the end of each guide and described by what the document covers, that is, by scope. We do not cite clause numbers, and we say a standard “requires” something only when that statement is literally the document’s published scope. Readers who need the exact wording of a standard should get the current edition from its publisher, because editions change and applicability depends on the market and the product.

When a guide builds on older publications, it is rewritten from the underlying evidence and not paraphrased sentence by sentence.

Illustrations

Illustrations on this site are independently produced schematic or AI-assisted illustrations. They are not photographs of any manufacturer’s machines and do not depict identifiable products unless a caption says so. Schematic diagrams are marked as not to scale.

Use of AI assistance

AI tools may assist with drafting or illustration. AI output is not evidence for technical facts. A statement counts as checked only after a person responsible for the content has consulted the cited sources, and a claim that cannot be traced to a source is removed or rewritten.

Dates

For guides, the visible Published date is the day the guide went live, and Updated appears only after a substantive change. We do not change dates to look fresh, and the dates in structured data match the visible ones.

For historical resources in the Technical Library, three dates are kept separate:

• Original resource date: the date of the original item, verified from the original or a reliable source.
• Reference page published: the date this site’s reference page first went up.
• Last substantive update: the date of the most recent change that altered the content in a meaningful way.

Original material keeps its original identity and its true original date. The explanatory page we write about it carries its own dates. The two are never merged into one date field, and a page’s date is not changed to make it look more recent. Search engines draw the same distinction between when a page was published or updated and the date of the event it discusses.

Corrections and long-term maintenance

Substantive corrections and updates are recorded in the Update history at the end of the affected guide. As Figure 1 shows, an update returns to the source check step. A changed statement is traced to its source again before it is republished, and the dateModified value changes only when the content did.

Minor edits, such as fixing a typo or a broken link, leave the visible Updated date alone. A correction that changes a conclusion, a parameter definition, or a recommendation changes it, and the Update history says what changed. We review content when equipment models, manuals, standards, or cited sources change, and we withdraw conclusions that can no longer be supported. We judge a guide by how complete its sources are, how usable its checklists are, and what readers tell us, not by link counts or domain age.

Commercial relationships

The About page introduces the publication. The Commercial Disclosure explains how ownership, supplier, sponsorship, and referral relationships are handled.