Recommend for a particular occasion.
Every recommendation should explain who a place suits and why it is included. Food, drinks, atmosphere, location, and value all matter, but their importance changes with the occasion. A collection’s criteria should be clear and each inclusion should answer its particular brief.
Limitations belong alongside the reasons to go. Noise, access, booking requirements, and other constraints should be described when supported by evidence.
Be precise about the evidence.
- Firsthand visit: identify the contributor and visit date only when a documented visit supports the account.
- Factual check: record the source and the date checked. A factual check is not a visit or a review.
- Venue-supplied information: identify information supplied by the venue where relevant, especially claims that have not been independently checked.
Missing information must stay missing until it can be supported. Do not infer a precise price from a price-band symbol or describe a venue as accessible, suitable for an allergy, or open now without adequate evidence.
Give prices a useful basis.
Food spend per person, the price of a drink, and a tasting-menu price are different things. Published estimates should state their basis and identify tax, service charge, or other exclusions when known. Estimates are guidance; the venue’s current menu and booking terms take precedence.
Keep facts consistent.
Venue profiles provide the shared factual record for collections and guides. Physical branches have their own records. Opening hours and kitchen hours are separate, and an article update date should reflect a substantive change rather than an automatic refresh.
Explain ordering and editorial judgment.
Discovery results respect the selected filters, then default to RED score from highest to lowest, with missing scores last and a stable identity order for ties. Hidden Gem is the secondary discovery score; readers can choose it as their ordering. Placement is not a star rating, and a collection is not an exhaustive ranking of Bangkok. Third-party ratings must be identified separately; they must not be presented as Red Bangkok scores.
Source listings and calculated scores.
Directory listings show collected venue facts separately from authored recommendations. Google ratings and review counts are identified as Google data and accompanied by the source observation date. An observation is a snapshot of listing statistics, not a visit, a factual editorial check or an individual review.
RED and Hidden Gem are calculated discovery scores on a 0–100 scale. RED combines the review distribution with a review-volume confidence factor that approaches a ceiling. Hidden Gem adds a preference for moderate review counts as a proxy for limited visibility. It cannot prove a venue is undiscovered, and may favor newer venues.
The current bangkok-v1 method requires a complete, consistent five-star review distribution. Missing or inconsistent inputs leave the score unavailable. A valid calculation can produce zero; Hidden Gem also returns zero outside its eligibility criteria of at least ten reviews, a distribution mean of at least 4.2 stars and at least 80% four- or five-star reviews. The two scores answer different questions and are not averaged together.
These formulas have not been calibrated as editorial quality ratings, probabilities or fraud detectors. They help organize discovery; a recommendation still needs a specific reason, a real contributor and supporting evidence.
Make commercial relationships visible.
Sponsored content, hosted visits, affiliate relationships, and relevant conflicts must be disclosed clearly on affected content. They must not be hidden inside a general policy or passed off as independent visits. Image credits and permission records should accompany editorial media.
Review before publishing.
Content moves through draft, review, published, and archived states. An editor should check sourcing, practical information, image permissions, suitability, and metadata before publication. Material uncertainty should be resolved or clearly stated, and unsupported recommendations should remain unpublished.
Correct what changes.
Readers and venues can report factual errors through the contact form. Corrections should be checked against the relevant record and source. Material changes should update the affected content and its meaningful update date.
Send a correction