Submission rules
What we publish, and what we don't
These are short because they matter. If you send us a note about a building, this is what happens to it.
Nothing publishes itself
Every note comes to us first. We read all of them. We publish some of them. There is no comment box on this site and there never will be, nothing you send appears anywhere until a person has read it.
We ask closed questions on purpose
The form is mostly a list of questions with a list of answers. Where is the laundry. What does the rent cover. Can a resident park. How long is the lift on a Monday morning. There are 11 of them and every one is optional.
That shape is deliberate. Each answer is a fact about the building, so if we get it wrong the building can tell us and we can change it. None of them can name a person, so none of them can be an accusation. And they are the things people actually want to know before they sign something, which no public record carries.
An answer only goes on a page once at least 2 people have given the same one, and it goes up as a count: "3 residents". Never a quote, never a name, never a star rating. Where people split evenly we say they disagree instead of picking a side.
The questions, as they stand today:
- Where do you do laundry?
- Which of these does the rent or the maintenance charge cover?
- Can someone living here rent a parking space in the building?
- Roughly what does a space cost a month?
- Are dogs allowed?
- On a weekday morning, how long do you usually wait for a lift?
- What happens to a parcel when it arrives?
- Is there someone at the front desk?
- Is there a gym?
- Is there somewhere to keep a bicycle?
- Who controls the heating and the cooling?
The box at the end is for us, not for the site
The last question on the form is an open box. Nothing you write in it is ever published, shortened or quoted. It is how we find out what to go and check, and it is the reason we can afford to leave it open.
Your experience is welcome. Accusations are not.
"The elevators were out for three weeks in August and the stairs are not fun from the twenty-second floor" is exactly what we want. "The manager is a crook" is not, not because we doubt you, but because we cannot check it and the person it names cannot answer it.
The test we apply: would you be comfortable if the thing you wrote were read out in the building's lobby, with your name taken off it?
No names
We never publish the name of a building's staff, a manager, a superintendent, a doorman, a board member or a resident. Not yours, and not anyone else's. If you send us a note with names in it, we take them out before we publish anything, and if the note only works with the names in it we do not publish it at all.
No personal information
Do not send us anyone's apartment number, phone number, email address, car registration or anything else that identifies a particular person. That includes your own neighbours, and it includes the people who work in the building.
If you give us your email we use it to come back to you with a question. It is never published and we do not add you to the newsletter with it.
No ratings, no stars, no scores
There is no way to rate a building on this site and there will not be one. A score is an opinion wearing a number's clothes. It would turn every page into an argument with a management company, and it would tell a reader less than "the lift is usually three to five minutes" does.
If you change your mind
Write to us and we will take it down. You do not have to explain why. See corrections.