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House standards

Editorial Guidelines

Reviewed 2026-05-26

This is the public version of the standards we apply to everything we publish. It's not a marketing document. It's the working set of rules our editors use.

Sourcing and verification

Every venue page on Habibi Guide must have at least three structured datapoints (price range, hours, dress code, capacity, age limit, geo coordinates, music policy, or aggregate rating) verified against an authoritative source before publishing. Authoritative sources include the venue's own published listings, official partner platforms (Platinumlist, Fever, Google Places API), or direct communication with the operator.

We do not publish venues we cannot verify. If we can confirm a venue exists but cannot verify enough of its operating details, we do not publish a page for it — we wait.

Last-verified stamp

Every venue and article page carries a "Verified [date]" stamp. This is the date we most recently checked the data against authoritative sources. We do not claim this is the date a writer physically visited — we do not claim physical visits we did not make. The stamp is about source freshness, not endorsement.

What we never publish

  • Negative claims about named venues. UAE Federal Decree-Law 34 of 2021 treats defamatory venue claims as a criminal matter. We comply, and we also believe that aggregate ratings are more informative than any individual negative experience. We do not publish "worst" lists, "avoid these" lists, or anonymous negative reviews.
  • Alcohol promotion. The UAE permits licensed alcohol service in specific venues. We may mention that a venue is licensed and that its beverage programme is part of its offer. We will not frame alcohol consumption as the point, use celebratory language about drinking, or promote venues primarily on the basis of their bar service.
  • Photos we did not license or commission. Photography on Habibi Guide comes from affiliate feeds, official media kits provided by venues, licensed stock (Unsplash, Pexels — with credit), original Habibi-commissioned photography, or — increasingly — original illustration. We do not screenshot from venues' public sites.
  • Content about prohibited categories. Gambling content, dating-app promotion, content critical of the UAE state or rulers, and content critical of Islam are out of scope.
  • Top-ten clickbait. We don't publish lists that are obviously assembled to game search rankings. If our editorial position is "these are three rooftops worth visiting," we'll say three, not ten.

How we use AI

Habibi Guide drafts a portion of its content with AI assistance — a multi-stage pipeline that uses different language models for different roles (drafting, quality control, compliance scanning). Every published page passes through:

  1. Structured data verification against our Supabase database.
  2. Word count and uniqueness gates (we use MinHash similarity scoring to prevent near-duplicate pages and to ensure we never lightly-paraphrase source descriptions).
  3. An automated UAE-compliance scan for alcohol promotion language and defamation risk.
  4. A human editor's review before publishing.

When AI drafts a page, it leaves a placeholder for the human editor to add a personal note, an opinion sentence, or a cultural observation. A page cannot publish with this placeholder still in place — the system blocks the build.

We disclose this in the footer of every page. We don't believe AI-assisted drafting is inherently a quality problem; we do believe undisclosed AI-assisted drafting is a trust problem.

Corrections

If you find a factual error on Habibi Guide — wrong hours, wrong address, a venue that has closed, a price bracket that is out of date — email editorial@habibiguide.com and we will correct within 48 hours. We do not silently edit; substantive corrections are noted at the bottom of the affected page with a date.

Editorial independence

Venues cannot pay to be listed on Habibi Guide, to be listed higher, to be described more favourably, or to suppress unfavourable coverage. Affiliate links are commercial; the editorial selection is not. Sponsored sections (newsletter, future placements) are clearly marked and structurally separate.

If you believe a piece of our coverage has been compromised by a commercial relationship, write to editorial@habibiguide.com. We answer.

These guidelines are reviewed quarterly. Material changes will be noted at the top of this page.