Editorial standards

The rules on this page are the reason any other page here can be checked, and they are written out rather than implied on purpose. A magazine that says a figure is dated owes the reader a definition of dating a figure. A magazine that publishes corrections owes the reader the procedure, and the promise. Everything below is the working method of the desk in the order a page actually moves through it: a subject is chosen, a document is read, a figure is dated, and a correction, when one comes, is published.

How a subject is chosen

A subject earns a page when a document exists that can settle it, and that single test does most of the work. A breed standard settles what the breed is on paper. A registry requirement settles which examinations exist and at what age each becomes final. The text of a statute settles what a state asks of a household. A peer reviewed study settles what a cohort measured and in which year. Subjects that circulate as talk, a rule somebody heard once, a number that never names its source, wait under the same test: the door opens when the document arrives, and until then the site says nothing about them. The notebook keeps the dated record of what has moved and what is still waiting, and the entries in the notebook name the document where each change reads.

What counts as a source here

The list is short on purpose, and a page that rests on anything outside it says so on the page:

What stays outside the list is the material a search returns first: summaries of documents, aggregations of other summaries, figures that arrive without a source attached, and any page whose framing gets to the reader ahead of its facts. The practical version of this section is the primary documents, the commented bibliography that names what the magazine reads, says what each document settles and carries the date of its last reading. Refusing the rest follows the same logic that takes a line off the screening table: a page that cites a summary has handed the reader a copy of a copy, and two readings in a row is one too many for a fact somebody will act on.

Dating a figure

Three kinds of date do the work, and a page uses the one that fits the figure. A study carries the year it was published and prints beside the number of animals it measured, because a percentage without its sample is a decoration rather than a finding. A statistic a registry recalculates continuously carries the date it was read, and that reading is repeated when the page is next worked on rather than carried forward forever. A legal statement carries the number of the article it rests on, and the number is held against the current text before the page repeats it, because a legislative session can move a rule that a summary still reports as settled. A requirement document carries its version date, and where a newer version may exist, the page says that instead of guessing.

How a correction is published

The procedure has four steps and it starts with a reader. First, a message arrives at the single address naming the page and quoting the line; write to the editors lists what a useful message carries. Second, the line is reread in the document it claims to come from, which is the only reading that decides anything. Third, the page changes if the challenge holds, and the date at the top of the page moves with the pass that made the change. Fourth, the correction is recorded as a dated entry in the notebook, so a reader who saw the earlier version can find what moved and when. A challenge that does not hold gets an answer just the same, with the document and the passage that settles it.

What this magazine writes instead of opinion

The space an opinion column would occupy goes to the material itself: the document, the date and the number, handed to the reader who has to act on them. The frame pages describe that machinery from both sides, about this magazine from the front and this page from inside. The same plainness runs through the rest of the frame: privacy and data applies it to what the site does with a reader’s information, legal notice and terms states who publishes the site and on what terms its pages may be used, and the page on sponsored content puts the commercial rules in writing before any commerce exists.