Editorial & Corrections Policy
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This page explains how we determine a restaurant's status, what our labels mean, and how to tell us if something's wrong.
Why this matters
A restaurant's open/closed status is the single most consequential fact we publish about it — it can affect a real business's reputation and a reader's plans. We label every status claim with how confident we are and why, rather than presenting everything as equally certain.
Our four confidence levels
| Label | What it means | Example wording |
|---|---|---|
| Verified | We (or a source we trust completely, like the business's own current, active website or social media) directly confirmed this within the stated window. | "As of [date], confirmed open — per the restaurant's own website." / "Confirmed closed as of [date], per direct contact with the business." |
| Reported | A named, credible secondary source says so (local news, an official government/health record, a credited outlet) — we have not independently confirmed it ourselves. | "According to [named source, linked], reported closed in [month/year]." |
| Automated | A location-data signal (e.g., a mapping/business-listing provider's "closed" flag) indicates this, without a human on our side confirming it yet. | "Per [data provider] location data, this listing shows as closed as of [date]; not yet independently confirmed by us." |
| Unverified | We have no reliable recent signal either way. We show the last date we could confirm anything and flag it as stale. | "Status unconfirmed — last verified open on [date]." |
We never publish a bare, undated "Closed" or "Open" with no source and no label. Open and closed are definitive assertions and are never published at Unverified confidence — if all we have is a stale or absent signal, the page says the status is unknown. We also never use language that implies why a business closed (misconduct, fraud, health-code failure) unless that reason is directly, verifiably sourced to an official record — and even then, we attribute it explicitly to that record rather than stating it as our own conclusion. We don't use words like "failed," "went under," "scammed," or "shut down in disgrace."
How to request a correction
Every restaurant page has a "See something wrong? Tell us" link. Tell us:
- Which restaurant/page
- What's wrong
- What you believe the correct information is
- A source or evidence, if you have one (a link, a photo, a name we can look up) — optional, but it helps us verify faster
- Your contact info, if you'd like a reply (optional)
You can also email us directly at hello@tvrestaurants.com, or use the correction form.
What happens next
We acknowledge correction requests within 7 days and aim to verify and resolve them within 30 days. If we can't reach a confident answer in that window, we'll downgrade the page's confidence label (e.g., from "Reported" to "Unverified") rather than leave a disputed claim standing at full confidence.
How we correct
When we correct a factual error, we update the page and its "last verified" date. We don't silently rewrite a previously-published status without a visible trail — the page's date stamp reflects the most recent correction, so a business owner or reader can see when and that it changed. If a correction is significant (e.g., we had a business's status wrong in a way that could have affected someone's plans or the business's reputation), we treat that as a priority fix, not a queued item.
A note on our own accountability
Maine law lets a publisher who promptly and prominently retracts a mistaken statement reduce (though not eliminate) potential damages in a defamation claim (14 M.R.S. § 153) — one more reason a fast, good-faith correction process isn't just good practice, it's how we intend to run this site. This doesn't change how carefully we source a claim before publishing it in the first place.