Core rule
Ads belong beside substantial content
A page can be eligible for display advertising only when it contains substantial editorial or reference material created or curated for IDS. Examples include long-form lore and character dossiers, detailed culture and organization files, combat records, substantive reviews, collector guides, card-set research, and detailed book, comic, or game dossiers.
Eligibility does not guarantee that an ad will appear. It only means the page is allowed to carry advertising if an approved advertising system is enabled and the placement remains consistent with IDS policy.
Protected surfaces
Where display ads should not appear
The homepage, Search, Imperial Intelligence Terminal, tools, Fusion Lab, comparison interfaces, relationship maps, randomizers, Subject Hubs, Topic Guides, question hubs, simple navigation indexes, About pages, Editorial Standards, Contact, Privacy, Copyright, and this advertising policy are marked ineligible for display advertising.
This is intentionally more conservative than simply placing ad code everywhere. A visitor using an archive tool or trying to navigate the site should not have the interface crowded by advertising, and a trust or legal page should not look commercially motivated.
Technical enforcement
The rule is built into the site
The IDS build assigns each generated page an eligible or ineligible advertising marker based on route type and content depth. It also publishes a machine-readable /ad-policy.json manifest listing protected and eligible routes. Future ad-loader code can read the same marker before loading display advertising.
The content-depth gate is deliberately conservative: a non-hub page must contain a substantial amount of main-page text before it can be considered eligible. Navigation-heavy or utility route families remain blocked even if they happen to contain many words.
Editorial independence
Advertising does not set the conclusion
Advertising, affiliate programs, referral links, and the IDS eBay store do not determine character analysis, lore interpretation, continuity labels, reviews, source choices, or anthropological conclusions. Commercial relationships should remain clearly distinguishable from the surrounding editorial material.
Affiliate and referral links are disclosed at or near the relevant use and in the site's Privacy & Disclosure page. The Editorial Team can also be contacted at [email protected].
Publisher identity
Who is responsible for this policy
The policy is maintained by the Imperial Dark Sector Editorial Team, based in Los Angeles, California, with an editorial background in anthropology. The policy can be revised as the site changes, but the underlying principle remains the same: original content comes first and monetization should not interfere with the archive's usefulness.