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Editorial Policy

This page explains where the quotes on SMS4Smile Quotes come from, how we attribute them, where software and AI are involved, and which pages we offer to search engines.

Where quotes come from

The collection was assembled from public quotation datasets and other published quote collections. Each quote is stored once. When the same words appear under several entries, we keep one and merge the rest into it, so links to the old entries lead to the surviving one.

Attribution

Quotes are attributed as they were recorded in their source. Quotes are famously misattributed, and we do not claim that every attribution has been checked against an original text. We do not publish a book, speech or date as a quote’s origin unless it is part of the source record. Entries attributed to placeholders such as “Unknown” are kept under Anonymous rather than invented names. When the same quote appears under more than one name in our sources, we note the other attributions on the quote page without claiming which is correct.

Where software and AI are used

  • Organising: software suggests themes for each quote and finds duplicates. Theme names are checked so that fragments and filler words never become topic pages.
  • Interpretations: the short “About This Quote” notes on individual quote pages were drafted with AI assistance and are labelled as such. They are one reading of a quote, not the author’s own explanation.
  • Not used: we do not use AI to write author biographies, to invent sources, or to generate descriptions for collection pages. Collection pages describe themselves with facts from the collection: how many quotes, from how many people.

Ratings

Star ratings show only votes cast by visitors. A quote nobody has rated says “No ratings yet”.

Which pages appear in search

Every page on the site is there for readers, but only pages with enough substance are offered to search engines:

  • Author pages with at least 15 quotes.
  • Topic pages that are a real theme, with at least 40 quotes from at least 15 different people.
  • Topic and author pages with at least 20 quotes, for authors with at least 100 quotes, and only where they are a distinct part of that author’s work rather than a repeat of their main page.

Single quote pages, later pages of long lists, and search results stay available to readers but are not offered to search engines, because the same quotes already appear on the collection pages above. The site contains no links to other websites.