Atlas Rug Guide exists to help people understand Moroccan rugs and buy them well. That is only worth anything if what is on the page is accurate, independent, and honest about its own limits. This page sets out the standards every guide published here will be held to — and what happens when the site falls short of them.
Independence
- Coverage is not for sale. A place in a guide, a recommendation, a rating, or a mention cannot be bought.
- No outside approval. No seller, dealer, brand, or marketplace is shown a guide for approval before it appears, and none has the ability to have criticism removed.
- Money is disclosed. Where a link or a relationship earns this site money, that is stated. The Affiliate Disclosure sets out the site's commercial position in full, including its current position, which is that nothing here earns a commission.
- Gifts do not buy coverage. If a rug or a service is ever supplied to this site free or at a discount, that is stated in the guide that discusses it. It does not entitle the supplier to a favourable verdict, or to a verdict at all.
Accuracy
- Claims of fact — about regions, materials, dyes, construction, age, and price — will be checked against sources before a guide is published, and guides will point to those sources where a reader might reasonably want to check for themselves.
- Words in this trade that carry no legal or agreed definition — "vintage", "antique", "authentic", "handmade", "tribal", "Berber" — will be defined where they are used, rather than passed off as if everyone means the same thing by them.
- Prices move. Where a guide gives figures, they will be given as ranges, with the date they applied, and as an aid to spotting when something is wildly off — never as a promise of what you will pay.
- Where something is genuinely unknown, contested, or thinly evidenced, the guide will say so. A confident sentence is not a substitute for a fact, and the gaps in what is known about Moroccan weaving are real.
- Photographs will be used to show what the text describes, and will not be edited in ways that misrepresent a rug's colour, condition, or wear.
Limits
Atlas Rug Guide is a reference, not a stand-in for an expert examining a specific rug in person. This site does not appraise, value, or authenticate individual rugs, and nothing published here should be read as an appraisal. The Disclaimer sets out where a qualified appraiser, textile conservator, or professional rug cleaner should be involved instead of a web page.
Corrections
Mistakes will be fixed in the open, not quietly buried.
- When a guide is wrong, it will be corrected as soon as the error is confirmed.
- A correction that changes the substance of a guide will be noted on that guide, with the date and what changed. Silent editing will not be used to make a substantive error disappear.
- Small fixes — a typo, a dead link, a clearer sentence — will be made without a note.
- If you think something here is wrong, please say so through the Contact page. A reader who takes the trouble to point out an error is doing this site a favour.
Updates
Guides will be revisited when the subject moves — when prices shift, when a source is superseded, or when a reader raises something that holds up.
The test
Every guide on this site has to pass the same question: would this actually help someone who is about to spend real money on a rug — and would it still look honest to them a year later?
Anything that fails that test does not belong here.