Atelier
Lady Julia

Our Editorial Policy states our publishing values and philosophy and works as a guideline for our editorial and non editorial contents regulation.

1. Editorial contents
1.1 Purpose and audience
1.2 Principles
1.2.1 Accuracy and truthfulness
1.2.2 Integrity and independence
1.3 Contents organization
1.3.1 Types of contents
1.3.2 Blog publishing
1.4 Children
1.5 Inclusive practices
1.6 Environmental concerns
2. Non editorial contents
2.1 Blog comments moderation
2.2 Linked websites and weblogs
2.3 Sponsors and advertising
2.4 Product reviews
3. Accountability
3.1 Learning from our audience

1. Editorial contents

1.1 Purpose and audience

Our contents are created mostly for fun and leisure purposes and have in mind schools and families above all. The craft projects presented are conceived to be executed in regular homes and schools without specialized equipment or requirements.

Our site is not intended for a professional audience. We are not engaged in giving expertise assistance or vocational training. We are not professional crafters, but regular people who love to share their craft hobbies with others.

This means our publishing involves a pedagogic approach as we share our whole learning process with its ups and downs. Combined with the Internet and blogging features, we believe this is a way to build up a useful resource for a social informal learning system and to strengthen a community of practice around craft topics.

1.2 Principles

Our editorial policy abides by the following principles:

1.2.1 Accuracy and truthfulness

We strive to publish clear and accurate contents on craft issues. We do a lot of information research. We choose our sources carefully and we reference them to our users.

We engage in a lot of learning, experimenting, creating processes and knowledge gathering, which we do our best to share with our users in a comprehensible, logical and intelligible manner and through clear and precise language.

We conceive all the projects we publish, making every effort to share with our users a realistic overview of our learning experience (difficulties found, errors made, etc.) We strive to transmit our honest opinion about the whole learning experience (materials and techniques experimented, working process and organization, including safety behaviours and measures, results obtained, etc.).

1.2.2 Integrity and independence

Our editorial decisions are independent from any commercial interest. Advertising and sponsored contents are clearly marked and differentiated from editorial contents.

Our editorial content may include references to products and suppliers, but always under strict editorial goals and never with an advertising intent or as product placement advertisement. We may at our sole discretion share information with our users about the brands and suppliers we are using or choose to try. We always give our fair opinion about its strengths and weaknesses, clearly stating that we aren’t endorsing those products or suppliers neither being paid to write about them.

The same principle applies when we receive products submissions to review. Although we accept products submissions, our editorial content is not influenced in any way by commercial pressures. So, we decide at our sole discretion which products are relevant and deserve to be reviewed and, for the better and the worse, we always give our critical and honest opinion about it.

1.3 Contents organization

1.3.1 Types of contents

Our editorial contents include different kinds of information concerning many craft activities. Information is presented as

• step by step guiding for do-it-yourself projects;
• lessons, video demonstrations and short courses on craft basics, techniques, tools and materials;
• media reviewing (books, videos, magazines, websites, etc.),;
• product reviewing (tools, supplies, etc.);
• crafters testimonials;
• articles on crafting experiences, crafts history, social impact, etc., etc.

1.3.2 Blog publishing

Our editorial contents are always published as posts. We’ve chosen a blog format for Atelier Lady Julia because it brings several advantages to our contents organization. For instance,

1.3.2.1 Communicational advantages

It allows us to interact with our audience, which contributes to know our users and their preferences and to have their direct feedback.

1.3.2.2 Pedagogic advantages

In order to transform a visit to Atelier Lady Julia in a valuable learning experience, we try to take the most of blogging possibilities. We explore its pedagogic advantages as it allows, first, to exchange comments and to discuss doubts and suggestions with our users and, second, to take advantage of a regular step by step publishing path. Further more, it allows to link and organize all the contents posted to serve different pedagogic approaches and learning purposes.

1.3.2.3 Information retrieval advantages

Using a blog format is also very convenient because it works as a powerful information retrieval tool, making all the contents posted very easy to retrieve. Blogging facilities make it possible to classify, catalogue and index all the posts and to organize them as a logical and well structured content. Since blogging features also include a searching tool and a Feed*, our users have all they need to use our contents as a small library on crafting issues and, even, to be automatically notified when it is updated.

1.4 Children

We advise adults to supervise children’s use of this blog. We offer family friendly content with activities suitable for kids of different ages, but it is up to parents or educators to decide whether a child may or may not safely use this blog without their supervision.

Parents and educators are in a better position to evaluate children’s maturity and to decide if they can navigate safely the Internet on one side and engage in trying our craft projects on the other. There are privacy and safety issues that need attention.

Our blog has links to other websites which contents we do not endorse and our own contents include craft projects that may involve certain difficulties for younger children or even safety issues. Even though we make serious efforts to point out the difficulties and risks involved when using some tools or products and which precautions and safety measures must be taken, nevertheless, an adult judgment is crucial. So, we strongly recommend parents and educators to be involved in this matter.

On our side, we’ll do our best to protect children’s privacy. Whenever we detect posts or emails with personal identifiable information from children we will promptly erase it from our files (please see our Privacy Policy).

1.5 Inclusive practices

We wish our blog to be inclusive. Therefore we make serious efforts to use inclusive language to avoid stereotyped, discriminative or unfounded assumptions. We do our best to choose neutral terms that state our awareness of differences of age, gender, sexuality, disability, race and religious and cultural diversity.

We also do our best to apply web accessibility solutions as much as possible, in order to make our contents more accessible to disabled people.

1.6 Environmental concerns

We love this beautiful Planet Earth and we worry about environmental issues. Waste management and the 3 R’s (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle) are among those issues. So, one of the ways we found to engage in our own waste management is to join our love for crafts to our love for Planet Earth. We creatively reuse materials that would normally be thrown away as garbage. Indeed, rethinking object functions and materials potential became one of our favourite creative challenges for the craft approach.

So, our environmental concerns strongly influence our crafting and consequently our editorial contents. That’s why we created a category of contents called ReusArt where we gather all the contents and craft projects related with the Reusing issue. We strongly recommend it, not only for environmental reasons, but also because it is extremely fun and challenging.

2. Non editorial contents

2.1 Blog comments moderation

Comments posted on the blog are a part of our non editorial contents. This means that they don’t reflect our opinions or editorial policy. They reflect our users’ opinions and are their sole responsibility (please see Limited Liability). We make a serious effort to allow our users free speech and to avoid restraining their freedom to comment.

Nevertheless, in order to keep our contents family friendly and our editorial standards, we have a code of conduct our users should have in mind when they comment Atelier Lady Julia posts. We only approve comments complying with our conduct code and that aren’t in any manner offensive, harmful, defamatory or obscene (please see our Conduct Code).

2.2 Linked websites and weblogs

We propose links to other websites and weblogs that we find interesting or relevant to share within our editorial purposes and audience. Although we examine those sites and select those links very carefully, these are not a part of our editorial contents. Therefore, as non editorial contents they don’t reflect our opinions neither our editorial policy and are the sole responsibility of their authors (please see Limited Liability).

2.3 Sponsors and advertising

All our advertising and sponsored contents are clearly positioned on our pages and marked as “Advertisement”, "Affiliated Links" and “Sponsors” to be undoubtedly differentiated from the editorial contents. This is a clear statement that we don’t edit, neither do we endorse that information, nor are we responsible for it.

Some of these contents are automatically delivered and we have no direct intervention in that process. Nevertheless, we make all possible efforts to display relevant contextual targeted ads for our audience and we take serious precautions to maintain and safeguard our editorial standards.

2.4 Product reviews

We accept products submission to review. Please keep in mind that we review them, or not, at our sole discretion and under strict editorial goals, never under commercial influences or pressures.

If you wish to submit your products, please consult our page “Submitting Products”.

3. Accountability

3.1 Learning from our audience

We are committed to deal fairly and openly with our audience. We expect our users to help us correct our mistakes in a constructive way. We wish to learn from our users’ feedback and from our mistakes as well. So, if you have a complaint, something to tell us about our contents or an opinion, an idea or a tip to share with us, please send it via our contact form. If your message needs a reply, we’ll answer it in the shortest delay possible.

*If you are not familiar with Feeds and would like to know more about it, you’ll find useful information at RSS (file format) - from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.