Editorial Policy

Independence

• No brand pays for placement. No manufacturer, retailer or PR agency can buy a position in a roundup, a mention on a comparison, or a change to a verdict.
• No sponsored content. There is none on this site and there will not be. If that ever changes it will be labeled unmistakably on the page itself, not in a policy nobody reads.
• No pre-publication review. No manufacturer sees a page before it publishes.
• Commission does not affect ranking. We earn the same Amazon Associates rate across the boots we link, so we have no financial reason to prefer one over another. Where the cheaper boot is the better answer, it ranks higher — the Timberland PRO comparison is an example.

Sourcing standards

• Every specification cites the page it came from and the date it was read.
• Every safety claim cites the standard by designation and number — ASTM F2413, OSHA 29 CFR 1910.136, ASTM F3445.
• Every claim about fatigue, injury or biomechanics cites an institutional source such as NIOSH or CDC.
• Owner-review patterns are described as owner reports, never as measured fact.
• Where a manufacturer does not publish a figure, the page says so instead of filling the gap.

What we will never publish

• A claim to have worn, tested or owned a boot. Steel & Sole has no wear-test program. Any page that implied one would be a fabrication.
• A credential the author does not hold. No licenses, no certifications, no “reviewed by our expert panel”.
• A fabricated review, testimonial or rating. We have no customer reviews, so there are none on the site, and no product schema here carries a rating.
• An invented price, ASIN or spec. Buy buttons say “Check price on Amazon” because we have no live price feed. Manufacturer list prices, where quoted, are labeled MSRP and sourced.
• A stock photo captioned as a specific boot. We hold no licensed photography of individual models, so product frames show a category photograph and say so on the frame.
• False urgency. No “act now”, no “limited stock”, no countdown timers.
• Medical or legal advice. Pages touching foot health or site compliance point you at a clinician or your safety officer.

Health and safety content

Some topics here touch on injury and health — plantar fasciitis, flat feet, knee pain, cold injury, prolonged standing. Those pages follow additional rules:

• Any claim about fatigue, injury or biomechanics is cited to an institutional source.
• Each page states explicitly that it is not medical advice and directs you to a professional.
• No page claims a boot treats, cures or prevents a condition. A boot can reduce a load; it is not a medical device.
• Safety-standard pages state what a rating does not cover, not just what it does. The EH rating page is written primarily around its limits.

Rankings and recommendations

• Criteria are stated at the top of every roundup, before the picks.
• Every pick carries a “who this is wrong for” line. If we cannot write one, we do not know the boot well enough to recommend it.
• Comparisons carry a “where both lose” section. Two products that are perfect for everyone have not been compared honestly.
• Rankings reflect fitness for the page's specific question, not overall quality — which we are not positioned to judge.

Updates and corrections

Every page carries a published date and a last-updated date, and the second changes whenever the page does. Product cards additionally carry the date their specifications were read.

When we correct a factual error we change the page and update its date. Where a correction changes a recommendation rather than a detail, we say so on the page rather than quietly editing it.

Spotted something wrong? Tell us — include the page and, if you have one, the source that shows the right answer.

On AI-generated content

Content on this site is researched against the sources listed on each page and reviewed before it publishes. Nothing here is published from memory or from a model's guess about a specification — every spec traces to a page we read, on a date we recorded, and you can click through and check.

That is the standard we would want applied to us, and it is the one that makes the rest of this policy meaningful.