Editorial Policy

This page explains who makes Rug Academy, how the articles are produced, what is checked and what is not. We wrote it because a reader deserves to know where the text in front of them came from.

Who runs the site

Rug Academy is a small independent website. It has no newsroom, no staff writers and no named experts. No appraiser, rug conservator, cleaner or dealer writes or reviews the articles. We do not sell rugs, cleaning services or appraisals, and no brand pays to appear here. Display advertising pays for the site.

How the articles are made: AI-assisted

Articles on this site are drafted with an AI language model (Anthropic's Claude). We say so plainly because it is true and because Google's own guidance on helpful content asks publishers to make the use of automation clear to readers.

  • Revised articles end with the line "AI-assisted; checked against the linked sources" and a date. For those, every figure, date, measurement and rule in the article was compared with the text of the source it links to. An automated check also refuses any paragraph that contains a figure not found in the source it cites.
  • Older articles (most of them were first published on July 27, 2026, in one batch) end with "AI-assisted draft, not yet checked against primary sources." They were drafted from the model's general knowledge. Treat them as background reading, not as a reference, until they are revised.
  • Pages that hold data, such as the rug label checker, the fiber care table and the weaving regions field guide, cite a source for every row and give the date it was read.

Why we use AI at all

Good rug information is real but scattered. The rules on what a rug label must say sit in the Code of Federal Regulations. The best care advice is in conservation notes written for museums, such as those from the Canadian Conservation Institute. The most reliable facts about how a Persian or Caucasian rug was made are in museum catalogue records. An AI model is useful for reading across those sources and drafting a plain-English summary. It is not reliable on its own: our first batch of AI-drafted articles cited almost no sources and stated figures we could not trace. That is why the revised articles are tied to their sources line by line.

What we use as sources

  • Law and regulation: the eCFR text of 16 CFR Part 303 (textile fiber labeling), Part 1630 and Part 1631 (rug flammability) and Part 423 (care labeling), plus guidance from the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
  • Care and conservation: the Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI), the UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program, the US EPA, the Carpet and Rug Institute and the Woolmark Company.
  • History and construction: catalogue records and essays from The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Industry bodies such as the Carpet and Rug Institute and the Woolmark Company represent their industries. We use them for care instructions about their own fibers and products and say which body a statement comes from.

Photographs

Since November 2026 the photographs on revised pages are real: museum photographs released into the public domain by The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Open Access), and photographs from Wikimedia Commons used under their stated licenses. Each one is credited on the page with its source and license. The AI-generated illustrations the site used before have been taken off the revised pages. Where we could not find an honest real photograph for a page, the page has fewer pictures rather than a misleading one.

What we will not do

  • Appraise, authenticate or put a value on your rug. That needs the rug examined in person.
  • Publish reviews, ratings, "tests" or testimonials that did not happen.
  • Invent people, credentials or reviewers.
  • Change a post's date to make it look older than it is.

Corrections

If you find an error, use the contact page and name the page and the sentence. We fix errors in the article itself and update its checked date.

This policy was written on November 13, 2026.

How we work

An independent reference site, written with AI assistance from published sources (how). No shop, no sponsored placements, no ranked “best of” lists anyone paid to appear in.

01 — Independent

We sell nothing

No shop, no inventory, no affiliate rankings. Display advertising funds the site, it is labelled where it appears, and advertisers see no guide before it runs.

02 — Fibre-specific

Every method names its fibre

No cleaning or repair instruction is published without stating the fibre and construction it is safe for, and where it is unsafe. Damage from cleaning a rug is usually permanent, so a general-purpose tip is worse than none.

03 — Candid limits

We say when we don’t know

Age, origin and value cannot be settled from a photograph. Where that wall is reached, the guide says so and points at what an in-person appraisal would settle.

About what you read here. Everything on Rug Academy is general information. Articles are drafted with AI assistance from published sources, and the ones marked as checked have had every figure compared with the source they cite (see our editorial policy). We say when the evidence is unclear, but we can be wrong, things change, and no article can know your particular situation. Please do your own research and make your own judgement rather than treating anything here as the final word. Prices, products and specifications around rugs and their care change constantly, and what suits one person will not suit another. Check current details yourself, and where a decision involves real money, safety or something you cannot undo, it is worth confirming with a professional rug cleaner or restorer before you act.