Editorial policy

Sources first

Every spice page, dish guide and story lists its sources. We prefer primary sources: botanical databases, peer-reviewed papers, historical botanical works, government records and published interviews. Where good sources disagree, we say so on the page instead of picking a side quietly.

How we use AI

We are a two-person project, so we use AI tools to help gather sources, draft text, narrate videos and make illustrations. Our rules:

• Every factual claim is checked against its cited source by a separate review step before publishing. Claims that can't be traced to a source are removed.
• Our editors, Qisthi Ramadhani and Mufattichatus Shobairin, decide what is published and can veto any page.
• Videos are narrated with a synthetic voice, and we say so in each video description.
• Illustrations made with AI are labelled "Illustration" and are never presented as photographs.

Images

We use public-domain botanical plates, openly licensed photographs credited beside each image, and maps and drawings we make ourselves. We don't use images whose licence forbids commercial use or changes. See Image credits.

Corrections

If we get something wrong, we fix it and add a dated note to the page. Tell us at hello@merempah.com, ideally with a source.

Independence

No one pays us to cover a spice, a dish or a place. If we ever publish sponsored content or use affiliate links, we will label them clearly on the page where they appear.

Respect

We write about other people's food. We name the communities a dish comes from, quote Indonesian voices from published sources with attribution, and avoid words like "exotic".