Editorial policy

Our editorial contract

FifthSet publishes News, Analysis, Opinion and Guides about the ATP tour. News aims for clear, timely reporting. Analysis distinguishes established facts from interpretation and uncertainty. Opinion makes its position and ownership visible. Guides explain what something is or how it works. A guide is not written as news: it explains a subject that outlasts a single week and is maintained rather than replaced. Where it states a current fact, a ranking, a result, a prize sum or a broadcaster, that fact is dated on the page and checked again by a set review date. A breaking development is reported as News; the guide is brought up to date afterwards, not rewritten around it. Every story is published under the name of the person responsible for its final approval; today that is Nicolai Schmid for every story.

Alongside the articles, each edition keeps a glossary. An entry answers what a term is in a short paragraph and cites its sources. Where a guide or story explains the topic in depth, the entry links it, and each entry lists the published stories that link to it. An entry may illustrate the term with a recent, sourced example; it does not argue a position and is not the place to follow an event.

Independence and conflicts of interest

FifthSet is privately owned and privately financed by its founder. It accepts no advertising, sponsorship, affiliate commissions or payment for coverage, and it is not affiliated with the ATP, the WTA, any tournament, player, agency or broadcaster. Should FifthSet ever accept accreditation, tickets, travel or equipment, the article concerned will say so. The prediction game on the same site has no influence on which stories are covered or how they are written.

Research and sources

Research may combine background reading, search, and supervised AI-supported synthesis. Wikipedia and search results can help locate context and original material; they are not substitutes for checking the underlying source. Search snippets and a model's memory are not evidence. For changing or consequential claims, we prefer official results, draws, rankings, schedules, tournament or player statements, and reputable original reporting.

Every published article ends with a numbered source list that gives the publisher, the title, the link, the source's own publication date where known, and the time we retrieved it. Inline references point to that list, and sources are linked near the claims they support. We preserve quote meaning, identify translated quotations, and separate fact, inference, speculation, and opinion. A score alone is not evidence for a tactical change, psychological diagnosis, or injury explanation.

Supervised production

AI may assist with research and writing. Nicolai Schmid reviews the evidence, revises the work, checks the sources, and gives final approval to the exact text and selected assets before publication. This process does not turn generated suggestions into firsthand reporting, and a story is not published merely because a tool produced a draft. This page states the process every story goes through; articles no longer repeat it individually.

Images and media

We prefer real photographs with a clear usage basis, such as a Creative Commons licence, and we name the creator, the source and the licence with every image. Captions say when and where a photo was taken. A photograph that does not show the event described is labelled as an archive photo. Model-generated images and illustrations are labelled as such, and no generated scene is presented as evidence that something happened. Every image carries a written description in the language of the edition it appears in. Charts and statistics name their data source. Animations have a static alternative for readers who prefer reduced motion.

Opinion

Opinion pieces are signed, labelled "Opinion" on the page and on every listing, and kept in their own section. The author owns the argument; the factual premises still have to be sourced. Opinion is never placed where it could be mistaken for a report.

Dates, updates and corrections

Every article shows when it was published. "Updated" appears only when the text changed in a meaningful way, never because the site was rebuilt, and each change is logged with a date in an Updates note at the end of the article. Articles about results, rankings or other moving facts also state the time the data was observed. A guide always shows this date, is checked again by a set review date, and logs its changes like any other article.

A later development is an update; an error is a correction. If you find a factual error, email kontakt@fifthset.app with the article link and the relevant detail. We check the report against the sources and correct confirmed mistakes in the text. A material correction adds a dated explanation of what was wrong and what changed, and the article is marked as corrected at the top. If a story cannot stand, it is withdrawn: the page stays with a dated notice, and the inaccurate text is removed from every public copy, including feeds and exports.

What FifthSet does not publish

Gossip about players' private lives and relationships. Diagnoses of injuries, tactics or state of mind that the evidence cannot support. Quotations we have not seen in their original context. Undisclosed generated imagery. Paid or sponsored articles.

Two editions

German and English are independent editions, each choosing its own stories, angles and timing. When an article exists in both languages, the page says whether the other version is a translation or independent coverage of the same subject. If a fact shared by both editions turns out to be wrong, both are corrected.

Reuse

Every published article is available in the edition's RSS feed and as a plain Markdown copy under /en/markdown/, and the whole publication is summarised at /llms.txt for automated readers. Quote FifthSet with attribution and a link to the article.