Editorial, sources and corrections policy

What Tamu Borneo publishes

Tamu Borneo is an independent guide to tamu — Sabah’s traditional open-air markets — and the traditional food sold at them. Each tamu listing gives its published market days, how sure we are of them, its location as far as sources describe it, and what sources say is sold there. Food guides explain what a food is and name the tamu where a source confirms it is sold.

How we source listings

• Every market day, opening time, location note, food link and visitor note cites a named public source, linked beside it.
• Sources are ranked: the Sabah Tourism Board, government and district-council publications first; then established news such as Bernama, Daily Express and Borneo Post; then reference sites such as Wikipedia. Community lists and travel blogs are labelled as such and are never used on their own to confirm a food at a tamu.
• Map positions come only from markets mapped on OpenStreetMap. We have not surveyed them on the ground, and town centres are never used as stand-ins.
• We write our own summaries of what sources say; we do not copy their articles.

How we check and label information

Every listing carries one of five schedule notes: confirmed by two or more sources, from one source, sources disagree, reported by a community list only, or not verified. When sources disagree, the listing shows each credible claim instead of silently picking one. Anything we could not verify is shown as unknown — nothing is guessed or filled in from memory.

Each listing shows the date its sources were last checked. We re-check a listing when a source changes or a reader reports a change, and update that date when we do.

Our relationship with the Sabah Tourism Board

Tamu Borneo is independent. It is not run by, affiliated with or endorsed by the Sabah Tourism Board, any district council or any trader. We cite the Sabah Tourism Board’s public pages as sources and link to its district pages, but we do not copy its articles or reuse its photographs.

Translations

Pages are written in English and translated into Bahasa Melayu and Simplified Chinese. The translations were drafted with the help of AI tools and are awaiting review by native speakers. Place names and food names keep their local form. If a translation seems to say something different from the English, the English page is the reference — please tell us so we can fix the translation.

Corrections and suggestions

Use the Suggest an update form. Tell us which listing or guide it is about and what has changed and, if you can, link to a council notice, news report or official page, or describe a notice you have seen.

We look for a source we can cite before changing a listing. Reports we cannot confirm are either added as clearly labelled unconfirmed notes or held until a source appears. When we correct a listing, we update its “last checked” date.