The Skyluma editorial standard

The Skyluma journal covers what is changing in skydiving: in the sport, in training, in equipment and in the rules. A story runs if it does at least one of the things below. If it does none of them, it does not run, however loud the subject happens to be that week.

• It changes what a jumper, an AFF student, an instructor, a rigger or an organiser ought to know.
• It records a meaningful result, record, rule change, event or technical development.
• It brings a story from abroad to Polish readers together with the context it would be unreadable without.
• It shows people or a community doing something genuinely their own.
• It explains a change at Skyluma that affects customers.

We do not publish "five reasons to skydive" lists, rewritten product copy, unverified clips doing the rounds, or articles whose only contribution is to put someone else's text into Polish word order.

Priority goes to sources that establish facts themselves: the FAI and its International Skydiving Commission, national federations such as USPA and British Skydiving, Polish institutions (Aeroklub Polski, the Civil Aviation Authority and the State Commission on Aircraft Accidents Investigation), equipment manufacturers and their service bulletins, and event organisers. Specialist press supplies context. A social post, a forum thread or a video can at most point us to a subject; on its own it confirms nothing.

We open and read the whole source, because a search result is not evidence. Every story lists the publisher, the title of the document, its publication date and a direct link, so that each claim can be checked by anyone. When credible sources disagree, we report the disagreement or hold the story.

Most sources are in English, and the journal is written first in Polish, then in English and Ukrainian. We read the entire document first and extract its facts: names, dates, figures, scope and everything that is uncertain. The story is written from those facts, not from the source's sentences, and then checked against the original sentence by sentence. Proper names, results, units and document numbers are checked separately.

A translation may never be stronger than its source. If the original says "may" or "preliminary", so does ours. A manufacturer's recommendation does not become a rule and a USPA requirement does not become a Polish one, which is why every rule we report says where and under which system it applies. We quote rarely, briefly and with attribution, and a translated quote is marked as the editors' translation.

Stories about accidents, equipment, regulation, training and health go through additional verification. They rest on the document of the body responsible for the matter: the investigating authority's report, the manufacturer's bulletin, the federation's notice.

• We do not name the cause of an accident before the competent investigators do, and we keep confirmed facts apart from preliminary information.
• We do not publish names before an official source does, and we leave out those that add nothing.
• We do not teach emergency procedures remotely. We report what changed, who announced it and whom it affects, and send readers to the full document, their instructor and their rigger for the detail.
• No offer and no buy button ever appears beside this kind of material.

Part of the work is done by AI-assisted automation. It scans sources, compares accounts and prepares a first draft, and that is where its role ends. It does not publish, it does not fill in missing facts, it does not invent quotes, results or credits, and it does not hide that information is preliminary.

Every story is read and approved by a person before it is published. The database itself enforces this: a story without a review flag cannot be published. Skyluma, as publisher, is responsible for everything that appears here under the Skyluma editorial desk's name.

Covers are Skyluma's own photographs or artwork made for the newsroom. A photograph that does not show the event described is labelled as illustrative. AI-generated artwork carries a label on the image and never passes itself off as a photograph from the scene.

We use other people's material only under a licence or with permission, credited the way the rights holder asks. We do not display other people's photographs straight from their servers.

A typo is fixed without a note only when the meaning is unchanged. A factual correction leaves a trail: the previous version stays in the editorial history, the story shows the date it was updated, and the editorial note explains what changed.

When a story develops, we add a dated update instead of quietly rewriting the text. If the central claim of a story turns out to be false, we withdraw it. We never change a publication date, not least so that an old story never passes for a new one.

Skyluma sells tandem skydives and the AFF course. The journal is not their advertisement: we publish no sponsored content, and we write about our own affairs only in the Skyluma category, when a change genuinely affects customers.

If you spot a mistake in a figure, a name, a date or the way we described a rule, write to us through the contact page. Include the story's address and what is wrong, ideally with the source. We check every report against the source and describe the correction on the story.