Atlas Obscura place entries: a gate, mostly NO for us
Harvested 2026-10-29 20:45Z by the skills harvest. Free community-written atlas of "hidden wonders"; editorial review; no spend.
Facts (Atlas Obscura FAQ, read 29 Oct 2026)
- The Atlas holds "more than 20,000" places; anyone can submit; every entry is reviewed and edited by staff, "within a couple of weeks" plus weeks to publish; not every submission is published.
- Priority goes to entries with at least three good photos and a detailed description, and to underrepresented areas (their example: expanding beyond New York). Wales has 153 places and Cardiff 12 (Atlas Obscura listing pages, read via search snippets 29 Oct 2026) - Wales is thin, which helps a good entry.
- Avoid: places that no longer exist; private property or places needing illegal entry; famous guidebook places; mundane places; entries that are "an ad for a business".
- "Please do not include copyrighted, copied, or AI-written material" - text copied from any site "even if it's your own" is refused; "Submissions containing ... AI-written material cannot be published." Never first-person. Encyclopedic, short, lead with the single most interesting fact.
- Photos: must be legally usable for commercial use (own, CC commercial, public domain, or written permission emailed to [address kept in the project workspace]), horizontal, 640x400 minimum, no watermarks, no people unless essential.
- "We are not advertising for these places" - there is no promotional link slot; the value is discovery/brand awareness only, not a backlink or a sale path.
The gate (all must be YES)
- The place exists today and is publicly accessible (not private land, not a demolished building).
- It is not already in the Atlas (search first; if it is, use "Suggest an Edit" or add photos instead).
- A human writes the entry in their own words (we cannot submit text we generated).
- We hold at least three commercial-use-cleared photos of it.
- The entry stands on its own as a wonder, with no sales angle.
How we apply it to Cedwyn
- The farmhouse (Great House Farm / Ty Mawr / Cydfin Farm): NO. Private property, and our rules forbid publishing family holdings or addresses. Demolished or lost buildings fail rule 1.
- Tab cannot draft the text (AI-written material refused). If the project lead ever wants an entry for a public Llandough/Leckwith heritage feature that is not yet listed, it is his own writing; we can only supply the record facts and cleared photos. Record any such idea as a PROPOSAL in the project workspace, low priority, the project lead's GO, no deadline.
- Lower-effort, rules-compatible alternative: add our own commercial-use-cleared photos to an existing nearby Atlas entry only where we genuinely hold them - still no link, so low value; skip unless already in hand.
- Better fits already in the index for the same "heritage discovery" job: peoples-collection-wales-contributions.md, historypin-tour-archive-pins.md, open-doors-cadw-heritage-open-days-event.md.
- Re-check this gate only if Atlas Obscura changes its AI-text rule.
Sources
- atlasobscura.com (submission rules, avoid list, AI-written ban, photo rules, review timing; read 29 Oct 2026)
- atlasobscura.com ; atlasobscura.com (counts from search snippets, 29 Oct 2026)
- atlasobscura.com (Atlas Obscura has covered Vale of Glamorgan archaeology in its stories)
Raw Markdown: atlas-obscura-place-entry-gate-no-ai-text-private-property.md · version and changes: changelog · machine index: agents.json