Parrains
Parrains
Dernière mise à jour:
Ce qu’un parrainage achète, ce qu’il n’achète jamais, et qui paie quoi.
The one-sentence version
Sponsorship buys advertising placement and nothing else. It has never bought and will never buy a data correction, a route being added or removed, a ranking, a word in an article, or the deletion of a known limitation.
This page exists because the project is commercial. A free service for travellers and a paid placement for a business are both ordinary things to do; running them in the same place without a written rule is not. So the rule is written down, in public, and the imprint points here.
What sponsorship is
- A named placement in a clearly marked sponsored container, at a size and position agreed in advance.
- An image, a link to the sponsor's own site, and a line of copy that the sponsor supplies and we publish verbatim.
- A mention in the sponsor's own material, if it chooses to make one. We do not supply a logo pack and we do not imply endorsement by the operators.
What sponsorship can never buy
This is the list that matters, so it is written out item by item rather than as a general assurance.
- Data accuracy
- No amount of money changes a departure time, a fare, a coordinate or a validity date. Those come from operators, from OpenStreetMap and from hand verification. A sponsor who tells us a figure is wrong is making a report like anybody else, and it is handled like anybody else.
- Route inclusion or exclusion
- An island is published because we have a usable timetable for it and a person who can verify it. The islands we are not covering are listed because we have nothing, not because nobody paid.
- Ranking, ordering or prominence within editorial content
- Which island, line or topic appears first on a page is decided by what helps the reader. It is not for sale at any price.
- Removal, softening or omission from a known-limits page
- This one is absolute. Nothing on the known-limits page, the methodology page or the changelog has ever been, or will ever be, affected by a commercial relationship. If a sponsor needs a limitation removed, the answer is no and it stays no.
- A word in an article
- Editorial pages are not written for sponsors. There is no advertorial, no sponsored article, and no ghost-written recommendation of anything.
- Removal of a correction
- We publish corrections that make us look bad, and we publish them with the date they happened. That obligation is not conditional on who is paying.
The editorial firewall
Sponsored content appears in its own container, with its own visual treatment, its own background and its own border. It is not inline with editorial text and it is not styled to blend in. A reader must be able to tell, without reading a label, which is which.
It is never placed inside an article body. There is no sponsored paragraph, no sponsored sidebar within editorial copy, and no sponsored module inside the known-limits page, the methodology page or the changelog. If a page is about accuracy, it carries no advertising at all.
Sponsored pages and posts carry the word "Sponsored" in the title, in the page metadata and in the visible heading, not only in a small print line. Search engines are not relied on to keep the distinction, and neither are we.
Identification of advertising
Every sponsored item names the sponsor and makes it identifiable without clicking anything. That is required, not stylistic. Article 7 of Directive 2005/29/EC on unfair commercial practices requires commercial intent to be identifiable, and Greek consumer law applies the same requirement in national courts. A placement that could plausibly be mistaken for our own recommendation is a breach, and we would remove it and repay the money.
The same rule applies to anything a sponsor asks us to write about itself. A sponsored description of the sponsor's own business is advertising, it is labelled as advertising, and it is not edited to look like our own voice.
The correctness guarantee
Some sponsors' businesses depend on our data being right. A taxi company, a ferry company, a tour operator or a hotel will lose money when a traveller cannot get back from a beach, and they will come to us about it. That is fair, and here is the position in advance.
Every time on this site is a scheduled time from the operator's published timetable, dated. It is not an observation, and we do not have a feed that would make it one. We cannot tell you whether a bus is running, late or cancelled, and no commercial arrangement will change that. If that is a problem for a business model, the answer is to take a feed from the operator, not to ask us to invent one.
Our liability is limited to the extent Greek law permits, and the terms of use set out where that leaves you. We are not a travel agency, we are not a contract carrier, and no contract is concluded for the free parts of this site. The realistic worst outcome is a modest damages award, and there is no punitive damages regime to fear.
Donations
A donation pays for hosting, the domain, the data refresh and the time it takes to keep the adapters working when an operator redesigns their website. It buys nothing else, and it is held to the same six rules as sponsorship.
A donation is not a purchase. It gives no rights in the content, no influence over it, no service level, no priority in a support reply, and no claim on the project. There is nothing to cancel, and nothing to be owed if we stop.
Donations are refunded on request if you made one by mistake or if the project stops running. A request goes to the same address as everything else, and a refund is not a negotiation.
Become a sponsor
Before a first placement we want one thing from you in writing: an acknowledgement that the six items above are not for sale. If that is not a problem, the rest is ordinary. Tell us what you want to say, where you want it, and how long you want it for, and we will come back with a price and a date.
E-mail: hello@cycladesgo.com
with Sponsorship in the subject line. In the current build that
address is a placeholder; the real one is published in the
imprint before
launch.
A final word on why this page is written in a stern voice. The temptation in a project this small is to treat a friendly sponsor as a favour. It is not one. A visitor who pays us and then reads our timetable is owed the same schedule we would publish if nobody had paid, and the only way to hold that line is to write down what it is before the first cheque arrives.