“Editorial policy” usually means a page nobody reads. Ours exists because the whole premise of this desk is that a review’s process matters as much as its verdict — so it would be strange not to publish our own.
What we’re looking at
When we cover a casino or pokies review, we’re not re-testing the operator ourselves. We’re examining the review: what it claims to have tested, whether that claim is specific enough to check, how the score’s components are weighted (if they’re disclosed at all), and how the write-up handles disagreement between professional analysis and user reports.
Our five house-style rules
- Name the claim before the verdict. A star rating on its own tells you nothing. We look for the specific claim — “tested withdrawal speed across three payment methods,” say — behind the number.
- Separate format from substance. A video review, a regional guide, and a single-vertical review (slots-only, live-dealer-only) package the same subject differently, and each format has its own blind spots.
- Check the update cadence, not just the date. A “last reviewed” stamp can mean a genuine re-check or a refreshed timestamp on unchanged text. We look for internal evidence of the former — changed figures, changed language, a visible revision note.
- Weigh user reports against tested claims separately. A comment thread and a structured test measure different things and shouldn’t be folded into one number without saying so.
- Say what we don’t know. We publish no operator ratings of our own. Where a claim in a review we’re discussing can’t be verified from public information, we say that plainly.
Correction & update policy
When we get something wrong, we fix it and note it. Factual errors are corrected in the article body as soon as we’re aware of them; for anything that changes the substance of a piece’s conclusion, we add a dated correction note at the top of the article rather than silently editing it away. Every published piece carries a visible “Filed” date and, where it’s been substantively revised, a “Last updated” date in the article header — not just in the page’s metadata.
Spotted something that looks wrong or out of date? Use the contact details on our Talk to the Desk page, or see Raise a Concern if the issue is about a casino or pokies operator itself rather than one of our articles.