Editorial Policy

This page describes how content on Basketball Arcade is produced. It is a working process rather than a statement of values.

The standard every page has to meet

Before anything is published it has to clear five questions:

1. Is it true? Every factual claim is either verifiable in the game being described, or sourced

and linked.

1. Is it useful? The page has to help a reader do something or understand something. "Ranks for

a keyword" is not a reason to publish.

1. Is it original? Written here, from playing the games, not assembled from other people's

coverage.

1. Is it specific? Advice that could apply to any game is advice that helps with none.
2. Is it honest about limits? Where we do not have something — a two-player mode, a dedicated

free throw game — the page says so rather than implying otherwise.

The production process

1. Identify a real question. Article ideas come from playing the games and noticing what is confusing, from questions people send us, and from gaps in what already exists. They do not come from keyword volume alone.

2. Play first, write second. Nothing about a game is written before it has been played extensively. For strategy claims that means enough runs to be confident the advice survives contact with the game rather than describing one lucky session.

3. Draft. Written by a named author. Every claim that involves a number is checked against the game's actual rules while drafting, not afterwards.

4. Fact check. A separate pass against the fact-checking policy: numbers verified, links opened, claims tested.

5. Editorial review. Structure, clarity, and the "so what" test on every section. Sections that do not survive the test are cut rather than padded.

6. SEO review. Title, description, headings and internal links. This step never changes what a page says — only how it is labelled and linked. If an SEO change would require altering a factual claim, the claim wins.

7. Publish and link. New pages are linked from the relevant category, from related guides and from the sitemap. A page nothing links to is a page nobody finds.

8. Schedule a review. Every page gets a next-review date at publication.

Bylines and attribution

Every article and guide carries the name of the person who wrote it, and every page states who edited it where that differs.

Our bylines — Jordan Mitchell and Casey O’Brien — are the editorial identities of this site. They are not presented as professional basketball players, coaches, officials or employees of any basketball organisation, because they are not. We state this on the authors page, on each author page, and here.

Use of AI tools

Stated plainly, because readers deserve to know.

AI tools may be used for routine support work — checking spelling and grammar, suggesting a clearer phrasing for a sentence that already exists, or generating a first pass at boilerplate structure.

They are not used to generate the substance of articles, to invent examples, to produce strategy advice, or to write anything that is published without a person having played the game, verified the claims and edited the result. A named author is responsible for every published page and can answer for every claim in it.

We do not publish bulk-generated content, and we do not run any system that publishes without human review.

Updates and dates

A Last updated date appears on a page only when the content has genuinely changed in a way that matters to a reader. Fixing a typo does not earn a new date. Changing a scoring figure, rewriting a section, or correcting an error does.

We do not refresh dates to look current. A page that has not needed changing shows its original publication date, which is the honest signal.

Advertising and independence

Basketball Arcade carries advertising. Advertisers have no input into what is published, which games are covered, or what any page says. There is no sponsored content on this site. If that ever changes, the content will be labelled on the page and this policy will be updated first.

We do not currently use affiliate links. If we add them, they will be disclosed on the pages where they appear.

Corrections

Errors get fixed. Significant corrections — anything that changes what a reader would conclude — are noted on the page itself. The process is in the fact-checking policy.

Content we will not publish

• Fabricated statistics, ratings or review counts
• Claimed affiliations with leagues, teams or players
• Credentials nobody here holds
• Pages whose purpose is to hold advertising rather than to be read
• Near-duplicate articles targeting the same question with different wording
• Guest posts, sponsored links or paid placements

Contact

Editorial questions and corrections: editorial@basketballarcade.xyz.