Vendor data gate

Vendor Ingestion Rules

Seed/Garden Explorer will not publish product or vendor data until the ingestion path is human-moderated, source-labeled, disclosure-aware, and unable to modify site content through a public write endpoint.

Updated: 2026-05-18

Human moderation gate

  • No vendor, affiliate network, sponsor, crawler, feed, or form submission can publish directly to the live site.
  • A human review step must approve every new vendor record, commercial relationship flag, source URL, and reader-facing claim before build-time publication.

Source-labeled records

  • Each product or vendor record must carry a source label, source URL, retrieval date, and a flag for whether the vendor supplied or reviewed the data.
  • Vendor-supplied claims stay separate from observed facts, extension guidance, catalog facts, and editorial summaries.

Commercial relationship disclosure

  • Affiliate, sponsorship, free product, discounted access, paid placement, employee, family, equity, insider, and vendor-review relationships must be stored before a listing can appear.
  • Pages using those records must place clear disclosure language near the affected product, vendor, link, review, or recommendation.
  • A platform disclosure tool can support the page, but it cannot be the only disclosure when the material connection needs plain-language placement near the affected item.

No public write endpoint

  • The site must not expose a public endpoint that lets vendors add, edit, suppress, reorder, or delete product, seed, guide, review, or vendor content.
  • Any future intake form must write to a private review queue, not to catalog JSON, static pages, ranking inputs, or generated site content.

No automatic publishing

  • Imported product and vendor data must remain draft-only until it passes validation, source checks, disclosure checks, duplicate checks, and human moderation.
  • Build-time generators may read approved records, but crawlers, feeds, and vendor submissions cannot trigger automatic publishing by themselves.

Review display and ranking controls

  • FTC source: the Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule went into effect October 21, 2024, and covers fake, false, or deceptive reviews and testimonials.
  • The ingestion design must not request, suppress, boost, delay, sort, or edit reviews in a way that skews positive or negative sentiment.
  • Paid vendors cannot receive hidden preference in ranking, default sort order, internal links, comparison text, badge language, or review display.
  • Imported records must not create, quote, summarize, or republish fake or false reviews, endorsements, ratings, testimonials, or reviewer identities.
  • Review requests, coupons, discounts, samples, and incentives must not be conditioned on positive reviews, negative reviews, star ratings, or changed sentiment.
  • Employee, family, equity, insider, and other company-connected review relationships must be disclosed before publication.
  • A company-controlled review page, score, badge, comparison, or collection process must not be described as independent unless the page explains the control and evidence.
  • Review suppression is prohibited, including hiding, delaying, or threatening reviews because they are negative or inconvenient.

Source basis