Editorial Policy

The standard we hold ourselves to

This page describes how Eski Tarih is made. It is here so that you can decide how much weight to give anything else on the site.

Picking subjects

We keep a running list of questions readers send us, plus questions we had ourselves and could not find a straight answer to. A topic gets written when it appears on that list more than once.

Bylines

Every article carries the name of the person who wrote it and links to their profile. We do not publish under a house byline, because a house cannot be asked to explain itself.

Elif Karaca, Kurucu ve Osmanlı tarihi yazarı. Elif, üniversitede tarih okurken başladığı arşiv merakını bir siteye dönüştürdü. Osmanlı padişahlarını anlatırken efsaneyle belgeyi birbirinden ayırmaya özen gösteriyor.

Mert Tuna, Din ve eski uygarlıklar tarihi yazarı. Mert, peygamberler tarihini ve eski uygarlıkları farklı kaynaklardaki anlatımları karşılaştırarak yazıyor, tek bir anlatıma körü körüne bağlı kalmadan.

Deniz Aksoy, Dünya tarihi yazarı. Deniz, dünya tarihinin hâlâ tartışılan anlarını yazıyor, suikastlardan diktatörlerin son günlerine kadar, iddiaları kaynağına kadar takip etmeden yazmıyor.

The drafting process

• Dump first. Everything the writer believes goes down, unsorted.
• Mark the soft parts. Anything held on memory rather than evidence gets flagged.
• Check or cut. A flagged claim is either supported or removed. There is no third option.
• Second reader. Somebody else hunts for sentences that sound more certain than the evidence allows.

Paid and unpaid links

We earn from some outbound links. That pays for hosting and research time, and it does not decide the verdict of any page.

We have never taken a criticism down because somebody asked, and the asking tends to tell readers more than the original complaint did.

Dates

The date on an article is the date it was published. When a change alters the advice, we update the modified date and say what changed. Cosmetic edits do not reset the date, because pretending a page is fresher than it is helps nobody.

Our refusals

• Claims about outcomes that nobody can verify.
• Content produced only to fill a keyword slot.
• Recommendations we would not give a friend who asked in person.

Corrections

Send the page and the problem to info@eskitarih.com. Typos are fixed silently. Facts are fixed quickly. Conclusions that turn out to be wrong are corrected in the open, with a note saying what we previously said.