Editorial policy
What BoatSharp will and will not publish, how facts get verified, and what happens when we get something wrong.
Who this is for
BoatSharp is written for someone about to spend real money on a used boat. Everything here is judged by one test: does it help that person make a better decision than they would have made without it?
Sourcing and verification
- Where a government agency is the authority — registration, titling, hull identification requirements — we cite the agency and link to the page we read.
- Where a company is the authority on its own product — price, coverage, what a report searches — we cite the company's own current published information.
- We do not source facts from competitors' pages, forums, or from a model's recollection.
- Every published article carries a published date and, when revised, an updated date.
What we refuse to fabricate
This list is exhaustive of the things people in this category most often invent:
- Testing we have not carried out, and first-hand experience we have not had
- Customer reviews, testimonials or quotes
- Statistics, coverage percentages and database counts
- Government rules, state requirements, fees and form numbers
- Screenshots or examples of report output
- Prices, and claims about what a product found
How unverified information is handled
An unverified fact is labelled, not dropped and not guessed. Two markers do this work across the site:
- [RESEARCH REQUIRED] — in body copy, where a specific fact still needs checking against a primary source.
- “Not verified” — in comparison tables. It means we have not confirmed the value with the provider. It never means the feature is absent.
State registration pages take this further: a state does not publish at all until its agency, titling rules, lookup availability and fees have been checked. A missing page is more useful than a confident wrong one.
Commercial independence
Affiliate revenue funds this site and does not decide its conclusions. We publish the limits of products we earn from in the same article that links to them, we link to free official routes on commercial pages, and we do not rank by commission. The affiliate disclosure lists every relationship we have.
Scope of advice
BoatSharp publishes consumer information. It is not legal, surveying, mechanical, insurance or financial advice, and it is not a substitute for an accredited marine surveyor, a sea trial, or verification with the applicable government authority.
Corrections
We correct errors of fact promptly, and we update the article's revision date when we do. If a correction changes the substance of a recommendation, we say so on the page rather than quietly editing it.
Send corrections to corrections@boatsharp.com. Please include the page and, where you can, the source that contradicts us.
Use of AI
Drafting tools may be used in production, but no factual claim reaches this site on a model's say-so. Facts are verified against the primary sources cited on each page, and anything unverified is labelled rather than published as settled.