Editorial standards
Last updated:
What we publish
- Computed data: panchang, muhurat, festival and vrat dates, eclipses, planetary positions. These are calculated, not written, using the Swiss Ephemeris with the Lahiri ayanamsha. No AI-written text appears above the fold on these pages.
- News: temples, pilgrimage, policy on temples and endowments, festivals and Hindu communities around the world.
- Reference articles: festival and vrat guides, temple guides, scripture explanations, astrology explainers.
- Opinion: signed columns by named contributors. Their views are their own and are labelled as opinion.
Sourcing
- News stories are based on at least two independent sources, or on an official source such as a temple board, trust, government department or court. They link to every source, in a source box at the end of each story.
- We write in our own words. We don’t copy passages from sources. Quotes are short, exact and attributed.
- We don’t publish allegations against named people unless an official body (a court, police, government or temple administration) has made or recorded them. Anyone criticised can reply (see “Right of reply”).
- Images are our own, official press images, Wikimedia Commons images with their licence credited, or supplied by the temple. We don’t use scraped news photographs.
How AI tools are used, and how humans check
We use AI tools to help produce articles, and we’re open about how:
- Briefs: for news, an AI model (Anthropic’s Claude) reads the public sources and prepares a brief: the facts, each tied to the source that states it, and what the story means for readers. For reference pages, the brief is built from our own data and computed dates.
- Drafting: a second model (DeepSeek) writes the article only from the brief, never from the sources directly, and never adding facts.
- Automatic checks before anything is stored:
- every source was actually read;
- there are at least two independent sources;
- every date, time and number appears in the brief or a source;
- there are no long passages copied from a source;
- the headline isn’t a source’s headline;
- there are no forbidden claims (guarantees, cures, fear language) and no medical, legal or financial advice. Anything that fails is held back.
- Human review: stories that pass the checks go to our editors. Stories touching on crime, allegations or other sensitive matters always go to a person. Once automatic publishing is switched on, at least 10% of stories are also spot-checked by a person.
The “Divya Panchangam News Desk” byline means a story was produced this way. Named bylines are written by that person.
Astrology and religious content
We describe traditions respectfully and note where they differ between regions and schools. We don’t make predictions about individuals’ health, money or relationships, and we don’t use fear to sell anything. See our Disclaimer.
Corrections
If we get something wrong, we correct it promptly and note the correction at the end of the article, saying what changed and when. Computed data is corrected at the source and every affected page updates. Report errors to hello@divyapanchangam.com.
Right of reply
Any person or organisation that a story criticises may reply. We’ll add a fair summary of the reply, or a link to it, to the story.
Advertising and commercial content are separate
- Ads are placed automatically by Google AdSense in marked slots, and labelled “Advertisement”. Advertisers don’t choose, see or influence our editorial content.
- We don’t publish paid articles disguised as news. Any sponsored feature is clearly labelled “Sponsored” and doesn’t appear in the news sections.
- Links to our own marketplace (pandits, pujas, shop) are shown as such. Where we earn commission from a partner link, we say so.