Ethics

Our Ethics

In essence, Thomas Sowell's quote highlights that advertising in a truly free-market society isn't solely about persuasive messaging; it also plays a crucial role in informing consumers and facilitating their decision-making process by providing valuable information about available options.

Our mission at Outdoor Aggregates could not have been better summed up than by the last half of Professor Sowell's famous quote and what it means. We are strong believers in the free market of ideas, entrepreneurship and the general benefit that comes with rewarding hard work and human ingenuity. We believe in the principles that can stem from living in a truly free market society, lost to our times.

We are also passionate lovers of the natural world, and feel humbled by nature for all and everything that it provides for us, even while rapidly deteriorating. Nature is life. Without a sustainable ecology, life as we know it will cease to exist. Therefore, it is our instinctual obligation to live and operate in a way that is the most natural and least harmful to our environment, and as humanely possible, without going overboard and calling for a return to the agrarian way of life.

We are also online shoppers who, for loving the range and convenience, have experienced the disappointments and suffered the damages resulting from the deceptive tactics of marketers, and traders, alike. The fact is that we feel it’s never been worse before, than it is right now. The only hope to remedy this is to pro-actively try to shape a better future, leading by example. Therefore, there is more to it than the matter of ethics. We feel there is a call for positive change that must be answered by society, so we are joining the cause.

It's a Real Process

It is a fact that all people have their preferences, opinions and prejudices. Plus, we are all plagued with biases. For those reasons, there is a process in place to help us apply and uphold the five pillars of our mission statement, in all the content we produce.

On Our Content Creation

We begin during the research phase, long before the writing commences. When it comes time for writing, we take a previously built framework for each topic, and begin the work by following an arbitrary process that contains a pre-determined content structure. What this process helps us to achieve, by design, is two-fold:

• The first great thing is that we get some impartiality, built-in by design. This helps us to write the content objectively because the same broad-based sub-topics are the base we build every article from.
• The other major benefit is the way it helps us to maintain consistency throughout content covering every unique type of decorative aggregate. Our process also helps to ensure there will be sufficient breadth in the topical coverage within every article, so that you, our readers, have been informed adequately enough to confidently make your own empirical assessment about the featured product or project. Once the draft content satisfies a minimum threshold, we have some individual latitude to opine, bounded only by our ethics.

Site-Wide Integrity

We are committed to publishing only quality content, supported wherever possible by publicly available facts. However, we also do express our own opinions, with the goal of making sure its trustworthy. When we do opine, we strive to base opinions on reliable information, like proven research and first-hand anecdotal experience or the experience of others (without a vested interest in the subject). Our team researches and reviews the facts surrounding all of our content to ensure it is up to date and accurate to the best of our knowledge.

We always welcome any reader feedback that can help us, in particular the correction any errors as a matter of priority.

Commercial Disclosure

None of our editorial content will ever be influenced by advertisers or their interests. Wherever we offer a service to our users that requires and affiliation with any companies or suppliers, such as connecting a user with the only source of a rare stone featured on our website, the supplier might pay Outdoor Aggregates a commission. This is the basis of the business model for generating the revenue we need to make the site possible. However, we will never publish anything knowingly false, or deliberately misrepresent by omission, for commercial gain.

Always Act In Good Faith

When conceiving of every idea we have; before publishing every article we produce; and, prior to finalising any we decision we take, we apply a simple test that has to passed.

Is this an act of good faith that's in the interest of our readers? Would it be viewed as an act of good faith, in the eyes of our readers or any other interested parties?

If there isn't a clear "yes", it's doomed to fail, because according to our mission statement, it doesn't align with our measure of success.

If you have any questions or concerns about anything we do, or that appears on our website, we are always just a message away.