Who writes for this site, how methods are tested, how sources are cited, and what happens when we get something wrong. The shorter version of the long version of how this works.
Every piece on Window Washing Guide carries a byline that links to a real person on our masthead. We have five contributors. Three are working window cleaners with combined trade experience of forty-five years. One is a materials chemist who came to the trade by way of a frustrated homeowner email. One is a field correspondent who runs a pole-and-rope operation in Phoenix.
We do not use ghostwriters. We do not buy syndicated content. We do not publish anything written primarily by a language model. The pieces on this site are written by the people whose names appear at the top of them, and the small interpretive choices and turns of phrase you read are theirs.
If you want to know more about a contributor before trusting their work, every byline links to a full biography page that includes location, tenure in the trade, beats covered, and our internal record of every piece they have written for us.
When a piece on this site recommends a method, a product, a ratio, or a tool, we have either tested it ourselves or relied on a documented source we can cite. The line between those two cases is drawn explicitly inside each article.
Our testing happens in three places: on the working routes our contributors run for their actual customers, on a small set of dedicated test panes mounted at our Chicago and Phoenix locations, and in the field on commercial properties where we have the building owner's permission to do controlled comparisons.
We do not test on customer property without disclosure. If a piece refers to a result obtained on a real job, the homeowner or property manager was told ahead of time and consented to having the result published, generally without identifying details.
Articles cite sources inline by footnote and aggregate them in a Sources block at the foot of the piece. Citations include manufacturer Safety Data Sheets, peer-reviewed materials chemistry publications, trade-organization standards (IRATA, IWCA, ANSI Z97.1, CPSC 16 CFR 1201), and the small handful of working trade publications we trust (Pro Window Cleaner Magazine; the IWCA Window Cleaner; Glass Magazine).
When we make a claim that depends on a specific document, that document is cited. When we make a claim that depends on a contributor's working experience, the byline is the source and the article says so plainly.
We do not cite Reddit threads, AI summaries, or unsourced TikTok videos as primary references, even when they are the proximate cause of a question we are answering.
Our contributors disagree, sometimes loudly, about substantive matters of trade practice. The longest-running disagreement is the vinegar question, which Mara and Easton have been litigating in some form for nine years and which is unlikely to ever fully resolve.
We treat this as a feature, not a bug. When contributors disagree on a topic that matters, the disagreement is stated explicitly in the relevant article rather than papered over with a consensus statement that nobody on staff actually believes. The article will name who holds which position and why.
We will not invent a fake unanimity for the sake of editorial smoothness. The trade is one in which reasonable working professionals look at the same problem and reach different conclusions. We owe readers an accurate picture of that, not a fabricated one.
When we get something wrong, we correct it in the original article and add a dated correction note at the foot of the piece. We do not silently rewrite history. We do not delete the wrong claim and replace it with the right one without acknowledgment.
If a correction substantially changes the recommendation in the article — for example, from "yes, you can use this on tinted glass" to "no, you cannot" — we update the headline, the social cards, and the search-engine description, and we add a banner at the top of the article calling the change out for at least thirty days.
If you find an error, write to us at corrections@windowwashingguide.com. We acknowledge corrections inside three business days, and we generally publish them within a week.
Some product links in our articles are affiliate links, meaning that if you buy a product through one of them, we receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. When this is the case, the article discloses it.
We do not accept money from manufacturers in exchange for coverage. We do not run sponsored content disguised as editorial. We do not allow advertisers to read or influence pieces before publication. When we test a product, the bottle was paid for at retail, by us, except in the rare case where a manufacturer sent us a sample for review — and in that case the article will say so at the top.
If a recommendation in our coverage stops being one we stand behind, we change the recommendation, even when an affiliate link is in place. The link comes off. The honest answer goes up.
We do not publish text written primarily by a large language model. The articles on this site are written by the human bylined at the top, and the words you read are their words. We have considered, and rejected, the practice of using a model to draft a piece for an editor to revise.
We do use AI tools for narrow, specific operational tasks: spell-checking, link-formatting consistency, alt-text generation for images that an editor then reviews, and the occasional grammar pass. None of these tasks involve the generative authoring of substantive prose.
If our policy on this changes, we will say so on this page. We will also say so in the articles affected. Readers should not have to guess about which words on a trade website are written by a person who has done the work and which are not.
Tell us. Editorial concerns go to editorial@windowwashingguide.com. Factual corrections go to corrections@windowwashingguide.com. Both inboxes are read by a human within three business days.
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