Dear reader,

The Data Steward exists to be useful to practitioners, and that only works if you can trust what you read here. So here's exactly how this publication operates.

Independence. No vendor, tool, or service pays to influence what we write. We are not sponsored to recommend anything, and we never will be in a way that's hidden from you. If that ever changes — if a future issue carries sponsorship — it will be labeled clearly and unmistakably as sponsorship, kept separate from editorial, and never dressed up as an unbiased recommendation.

Honesty about tools. When we assess a vendor or a tool, we tell you what we actually think, including when the honest answer is "this isn't worth it for a company your size." Our loyalty is to the practitioner reading, not to anyone selling.

Anonymity. This publication is written anonymously, by a working practitioner. That's a deliberate choice: it lets us write honestly about the realities of this job — the dysfunction, the vendor games, the things that go wrong — without political cost. Anonymity is never used to say things we wouldn't stand behind; it's used to say true things freely.

Accuracy. We do our best to get things right, and every factual claim is checked before it's published. When we get something wrong, we'll correct it.

Your privacy. Reader replies are treated as confidential. When we draw on what practitioners tell us, it's anonymized and generalized — your story never becomes identifiable material.If you ever think we've fallen short of any of this, reply and tell us. Holding a publication to its standards is fair game, and we'd rather hear it.